RUGBY INTERVIEW - NATHAN HINES: GERRY THORNLEYmeets the sterling lock who has added ballast, bite and brains to the Leinster pack and will be leaving with happy memories when he takes up a contract with Clermont Auvergne next season

ON THE face of it, Nathan Hines has had a fairly “nomadic” career. The man from Wagga Wagga, a remote marina army base in New South Wales, pitched up in Galashiels with a back pack to see the 1999 World Cup. It was meant to be a six-month Aussie “walkabout” yet, in a sense, he’s still hereabouts.

Alongside an international career with Scotland which now numbers 72 caps and the ’09 tour to South Africa with the Lions, he’s played almost 200 games in six years with Edinburgh, four with Perpignan and two with Leinster, with two more to come at Clermont Auvergne.

Yet he doesn’t particularly like the term “nomadic” as it hints at something of a rugby mercenary, with no loyalty. “I don’t see it as derogatory, but as a journeyman, or a rugby player for hire.” He cites his six years at Edinburgh and four at Perpignan as a sign that he’s something of a “serial monogamist, in rugby terms”.

Indeed, he only left Edinburgh because he had briefly retired from international rugby and thus didn’t fit into Matt Williams’ “Fortress Scotland” philosophy, and had it not been for his decision to accept his Lions call-up and thus miss Perpignan’s French championship final in the summer of ’09, he would probably have stayed there.

Likewise now, for Joe Schmidt and Jonno Gibbes wanted him to stay, but the IRFU Players’ Advisory Group – perhaps mindful that Hines would be nearly 35 by the time he had finished his World Cup commitments with Scotland – wouldn’t sanction even a one-year deal.

“It’s not my choice or Leinster’s, to be fair. Joe and Jonno were keen for me to stay on, I said I would love to stay on, and I thought I was playing good enough footie to stay on. But obviously the IRFU weren’t happy that I was not Irish-qualified and they weren’t prepared to extend my contract.

“Joe fought quite hard to get me signed up for next year, but the IRFU weren’t budging, they weren’t prepared to extend my tenure here, so obviously you can only do what you can do. For me then it wasn’t a question of whether I was going to leave but where I was going to go.”

Negotiations had dragged on since last October, so by the time he found out in February he also admits it was something of a relief. “I had enough time to try and find somewhere else, but obviously it was very disappointing to hear they didn’t want me to stay on.

“I take it as a little bit of compliment that they don’t want me to be here, in that I might be blocking someone’s development, but I feel sorry for Joe in that he’s trying to pick a team that he feels can do the best job, and ultimately it’s his neck that’s on the line. If we don’t go well he’s the one that’s going to bear the brunt of it. So I just feel a little bit sorry for Joe. He wants a team with players he wants, but obviously can’t get it entirely.”

By contrast, Clermont offered him a two-year deal. “Maybe I might have been a little bitter if the situation hadn’t ended the way it did; if I was still waiting on a club to pick me up but in the end I got a two-year deal with a very good club, and while I would have liked to have stayed, with the cards that were dealt to me this is probably the best option.”

At least he and his wife, Leann, have experienced French life, culture and its language for the four years he played with Perpignan, although it means another upheaval, and this time with their two-year-old son Josh.

With the World Cup looming, the logistics of the move will be “a little bit disjointed”. They will move their stuff in June, before he starts training with Scotland in July and August. This will encompass a week off in Clermont en famille, before Lee-Anne and Josh travel to Australia and New Zealand for the World Cup.

Hines hasn’t decided whether the World Cup will be his last stint with Scotland. “I don’t want to be one of those players who plays and plays and plays – just sort of hanging in there. If I don’t think I’m playing that well or I don’t think I’m doing that well for the team then it’s time to give it away. But I think at the moment I’m doing alright and I’m still enjoying it, so I don’t see any reason why I can’t look forward to the next two years at Clermont.”

Clermont are spending big in advance of their centenary season – Regan King, Lee Byrne, Benjamin Kayser from Stade Français, David Skrela from Toulouse, Gerhard Vosloo from Brive and Sitiveni Sivivatu are also joining. “It’s a very ambitious club and that’s where you want to go; to a club that shares the same ambition as you to win things and to be the best in France and Europe. That’s one of the main things that attracted me to Leinster, and especially when you’re getting on in years, that’s the thing that keeps you motivated.”

Though laid-back and laconic off the pitch, he’s a hard nut on it. Hines’ physical ballast close-in adds greatly to Leinster’s defensive and attacking mauls, he ups their offloading quotient and his savvy as a lineout lifter was expertly highlighted by Dean Ryan in the Sky Sports bunker at the Aviva last weekend.

The Leinster pack is simply a better unit when Hines is there and he appears to be playing as well as aver.

This he attributes simply to enjoyment, ambition and Leinster’s fitness and conditioning staff. Over the years, he hasn’t particularly had to adapt in terms of his training regime, diet or social habits. “I’d like to think I’m pretty controlled in that area. I look after my diet and I don’t drink very much; especially if you’ve got a young child, you don’t have too many late nights.”

Hines has already matched last season’s haul of 20 games for Leinster, despite autumnal and Six Nations campaigns. He likes the way Leinster and the Irish provinces have retained their identity through dint of keeping so many local players, the exciting brand of rugby they play, the shared ambitiousness and the friendships, citing an off-the-cuff decision by eight of them to go into town for dinner last Monday night.

Growing up in Wagga Wagga (“It’s west of Canberra, and really in the middle of nowhere,” he admits) he played rugby league at school, as well as volleyball, and rugby union in the “off” weeks, which led to a stint with Manly. His initial intention was to spend six months backpacking in London with Leann. But after training one night at Manly a team-mate who had just returned from Melrose in Scotland knew of a fellow Aussie who was taking over at Gala and suggested he might be interested in a lock.

He joined a Gala team containing Chris Paterson, who scored all his side’s points in an 8-3 Scottish Cup final win over Kelso. The following Saturday, Hines and Paterson were in a Gala team which won the Melrose Sevens, on foot of which he was asked aboard by Edinburgh. “Everything went my way that year, and if they didn’t things might have been different.” And the rest, as they say, is history.

One day, he and Leann were listening to an item on the car radio about fellow Aussie Jason Jones-Hughes declaring for Wales, when he joked to her that maybe he could declare for Scotland as his mother Avon’s father, George Nairn, was born in Glasgow. On foot of being made aware of this, Gala had him declared as a Scot rather than a foreigner.

His career would be interrupted by a shoulder operation in January of his first season with Edinburgh, 1999-2000, but he returned to play for the Scottish Sevens in May, and was put on standby for the Scottish tour of New Zealand that summer.

“I was getting ready to go to a friend’s wedding on a Saturday, Leann was in the shower and we got a call, which basically said get your bags packed, you’re flying to New Zealand, because Scott Murray was injured. So I told Leann, ‘sorry I can’t go to the wedding because I’m flying to New Zealand.’ Obviously that wasn’t very popular.”

He arrived the following Monday, played the second half against Hawkes Bay the next night, was named on the bench and on July 1st at Eden Park he came on for the last 20 minutes against the All Blacks.

“It was a really good day. Mum and dad flew across from Australia, and I remember John Rutherford came up to me beforehand and said: ‘don’t worry about who you’re playing against’ and I think had he known me for a little bit longer he wouldn’t have said that because he’d have known that I wouldn’t have cared anyway.”

The late start to his pro career may have something to do with his longevity, as might a second enforced interruption courtesy of a cruciate ligament injury which sidelined him for exactly a year. Not that he harbours regrets anyway, and as for the “retirement”?

“I just didn’t think it was the right environment for me to play my best rugby, that’s all. No offence to Matt personally, I just didn’t think I was doing myself or my country a service. I wasn’t playing my best rugby because I wasn’t happy, so then why do it?”

There are no regrets either from his four years at Perpignan. “It was a great place to live and the guys were good, and the change was a really good thing for me. I can’t complain at all and I still keep in touch with the guys and watch them on the telly and still have a house down there. So it can’t be all that bad,” he says.

However, by the time they were bridging a 54-year gap by beating Clermont in the final, Hines was in South Africa fulfilling an ambition to play for the Lions. A victim of the calendar, not even Hines could be in two places simultaneously. Although Perpignan said they understood, he wondered if they really did.

He’ll take a few lessons to brush up on the French he learned while at Perpignan in readiness for the move to Clermont. The Top 14 is a tough league, a school of hard knocks and all that. “It’s tough as a forward and very combative up front. I quite like it, to be fair. It’s quite honest, it’s very tight, and a little bit violent up front, and then there’s the guys with the flair out back. Defences are a bit tougher, but every now and then you get a glimmer of it and that’s still a nice sight to see.”

In the event, Hines’ two-year tenure with Leinster coincided with the end of Michael Cheika’s era and the beginning of Joe Schmidt’s. “Obviously I missed out on Check’s angry years,” he jokes. “From my perspective he always treated me with respect and was always honest with me so I have no worries with him whatsoever.

“I think he left a lot of organisation in place, a good structure, a good club spirit and ethos, and Joe has come in and taken it on. He’s a different coach as well, so it makes it that little bit fresher for everyone, and people see things they didn’t see before.”

Compared to silly September, when Leinster were losing three away games while gradually easing frontliners back, Schmidt’s stock couldn’t be higher.

“He’s of the attitude that he wants us to have ambition to play. Because he’s got that respect and belief in the guys to do that, that breeds confidence, and when you’re more confident you play better. He’s quite fastidious, he likes detail and he picks up on little things too. He knows what (opposition) teams are trying to do. He understands the game really well. Yeah, a good coach.”

He loves the ambition and professionalism within Leinster’s ranks as well as the talent. “The good thing about Leinster is that you don’t have to yap very much. Everyone’s thinking the same sort of thing and everyone’s capable of doing their own stuff, and it makes you a little bit more focused on what you have to do and not worry about anyone else.

“I’ve made some very good very friends here, so when the day comes, whenever the competitions finish, I’ll be sad and I’ll miss them when I go, but I’m as happy as I’ve ever been here and it’s better than living in London,” he jokes. “We’ll keep in touch and I’m sure I’ll be getting plenty of banter if we have to play each other in the Heineken Cup in the next two years.

“And if it does, I won’t be looking forward to playing them, to be fair.”