Lions Tour, first Test: This is it then. The biggest test he's ever faced. Paul O'Connell has always looked destined for greatness, but if now is to be his time he has to step up to another level tomorrow. Even what's gone before won't be enough. History demands it. The occasion demands it.

Drawing a smaller crowd in one of the two interview rooms than many of his team-mates, O'Connell seemed remarkably relaxed. He's so good that we judge him by high standards, probably unfairly high standards. But he accepts what the occasion demands of him.

"Yeah, big time, big time, and you wouldn't be here if you didn't think you could do it. Every time you come along, with Munster or Ireland, it's always a step up.

"You've got to prove yourself, and when it comes to making the step you either do it or you don't, and if you don't have the mental strength you fade away. You gotta prove yourself, and if you do you can make history and do special things."

He's been primed. When handing O'Connell the number-four Lions jersey before the Maori game, Lawrence Dallaglio reminded him whose mantle he was inheriting: that of Willie John, Big Bill Beaumont and, probably the most natural-born leader of men of recent Lions vintage, some fella called Johnson. Dave Alred hammered home the message: O'Connell is taking over from legends.

"It's a great pressure to pick up that jersey and know that Martin Johnson had it for the last three tours before me. Willie John McBride has had that number before me, so I suppose I have to carry that on now.

"It's like captaining a side. I enjoy that kind of pressure. You know you're not going to look the part if you don't step up. It's a great pressure to have. If you don't do this jersey justice, what are people going to think of you?"

Besides, it provides him with his own little piece of immortality in-the-making.

"It's your chance to make it so that the next guy who pulls on the number four has to live up to Paul O'Connell as well as Martin Johnson and Willie John McBride."

Even the personal and collective setback of the Maori defeat O'Connell stacks away in a neat bag and ties a ribbon on it.

"I did okay against the Bay of Plenty but struggled against the Maori. I think we failed to match their intensity - we were at a stage of the tour when we were working heavy on organisation and kind of left the main bits of rugby behind us: the work ethic, the determination and aggression at the breakdown. I think it was a match that needed to happen for us. If that had happened in the first Test it would have been a lot worse than if it had happened against the Maori. It was a very disappointing night for me and for the team, but I think it needed to happen for the tour."

When the phenomenally talented O'Connell was cutting a swathe with Young Munster in the All-Ireland League in his early 20s, you could see he was made of the right stuff, the Johnson-like stuff. But not even he knows when playing for the Lions against the All Blacks came into his orbit.

"I don't know, honestly. I only take it as it comes. I suppose I took up rugby late enough and I just got so much luck along the way - getting in here and there, got a contract with Munster, and got my break with Ireland when Mal (O'Kelly) picked up an injury, played in a very good Irish side with the likes of Woody and Drico, and just went along with the momentum. A lot of luck and a lot of hard work, I've just taken it as it comes. You don't take it for granted."

Matt Dawson, another third-tour veteran, has warned O'Connell he and his team-mates will be in a place they've never been before, but he regards that as "a cool thought". In O'Connell's world, in the tight five, you can feed off the adrenalin rush.

"The more of that that's there for you the better. It's a different game. The back five - what is it that Declan Kidney says? - 'ice in the mind, fire in the belly'. Whereas the more up for it we are the better, the better I perform anyway. You won't be trying to control it, you'll be trying to get as much of it out of yourself as you can."

As in any other game at the coalface, O'Connell and his fellow piano-shifters have to get their basics right and then be "majorly aggressive at the breakdown" matching numbers with numbers.

"That's their big thing, the one-on-ones. Whether it's a big forward running at another forward or a back taking on a back with a sidestep, the one-on-one is big down here. That's one of our big things, winning the collisions.

"If you win the collisions it answers a lot of your problems in terms of defence. You don't give them go-forward ball, and if you win the collisions you do yourself a lot of help at the breakdown because you're on the front foot."

The Lions have adopted something of a bunker mentality, especially the Test team in the last week and a half, and that sits fine too with someone honed out of Young Munster granite, where they've always flourished within an us-against-the-world mentality.

"I suppose we've nothing to lose if you listen to what the media say. It's a chance of making history, and if you have what it takes upstairs you can grab it and really do something special and be remembered as somebody special in a special team for the rest of time." There aren't many bigger challenges than that, even for Paul O'Connell.