Leinster v PerpignanKeith Duggan on how Leo Cullen's grounded ways help him to cope with the highs and lows of the game

In the Cullen household, this is lambing season. Normal life suspended for nocturnal vigils and treks across the pastures to deliver bottled milk and long, messy birthing. For many years, the entire family got roped in to help by Paula Cullen who saw a spiritual dimension to the affair.

All Leo could ever see was the approach of a headache from that infernal bleating. The mystical side of it was lost on him. If he listens hard enough this week from his pad along the Royal Canal, he can still hear those ceaseless calls. He frequently wonders how his mother does it. But he insists he would love to help her this weekend except he has a rugby game to play. The old excuse.

A Wicklow farm and the gilded corridors of Blackrock College are the two very separate worlds bridged by the long and spare frame of Leo Cullen. He moved through field and schoolyard with un-self-conscious ease. School was great but once it was over, he left. The lifelong obsession with the beloved striped tie is not for him.

Leo has a countrified face, with rosy cheeks and a mischievous, sloping grin that he uses when he recounts his days at 'Rock. He knows the Leinster schools scene is strange; a sporting hothouse with decades of tradition tended to by greying men who see in Donnybrook afternoons an opportunity to retrieve a lost adolescence.

Athletic and something of a physiological phenomenon - he acquired a dizzying eight inches over one short summer - Leo was lucky and talented enough to live the Blackrock philosophy. He achieved a Junior Cup and two Leinster Senior Cups in an era so talented Brian O'Driscoll only made the bench. In 60 years' time, the inner sanctum will still refer to them as Barry Gibney's team. In a fit of fancy, they were labelled "The Dream Team" and were all assured that life, young man, life was just the red carpet lain in their honour.

Regularly, they played in front of thousands who made enough noise to make Donnybrook feel like the centre of the universe. It's just that for the blond-haired number eight, home was not at the centre.

Sometimes he caught a lift down the country with his father Frank, other evenings he took a train and a bus and occasionally walked the last mile back to the house caked in Dublin 4 mud from an after-school session. In summers and at weekends, he would help on the farm and spend the odd Saturday wearing the longest apron they could find in his uncle's butcher's in Wicklow town. "A nice bit of liver, Mrs Molloy. Yea, Clongowes next Wednesday. And a half pound of mince." As Confessions of a Leinster Schools Rugby Hero go, his are hardly clichéd.

"We went through the usual procedure of rearing animals, killing them and bringing them to the shop. It is my uncle's place and I worked there quite a bit. And then obviously we would work on the farm through summers and things. It was really good growing up in that environment because you were not stuck in that south Dublin buzz the whole time. Because it can fairly sweep you along and I can see how some people are when they leave school with that whole rivalry thing. Bob Casey was my best friend at school and he was from Maynooth so I suppose we were both like outsiders looking in even though we were at the very heart of it."

Which is not to say he didn't love it. Who wouldn't? The aspirations were clearly delineated. When he was starting out in Willow Park, one day Victor Costello and Shane Byrne appeared in their classroom - in the flesh - with the Leinster Schools' Cup. They inhabited a land he could dream of and, true enough, five years later, first years were asking for his autograph.

"At 17 years of age," he laughs. "It was all a bit unreal. But it is just because the tradition is there. That's how it has always been. And it creates a phenomenally competitive atmosphere. Like, what are you meant to do after you experience playing in front of 25,000 people at school?

"I remember making my Ireland schools debut in Scotland - a handful of people showed up - and thinking, 'this is not the way it should be'. I mean, some praise the Leinster schools and others wonder it if it is a bit too much and I don't think there is any right answer."

Last weekend, Leo went to watch his younger brother, Owen, make his debut for the Blackrock under-20 team, coached by Gibney. Over the years, some old comrades have faded into the crowd but not Gibney. He seemed proof of the Blackrock ethos of manifest destiny. Gibney is regarded as one of the best schools players ever and was honest and hard working enough to expect bright returns from the game when he graduated on to the senior scene. Except he shattered his knee in a Division Two game at Stradbrook against Belfast Harlequins and his serious rugby life was terminated. It is the randomness of the game that is as haunting as the story itself.

So Leo advanced through the uncertain seasons following school -"limbo years" he calls them - while his friend adjusted to fun rugby and coaching.

"It was very sad the way it happened," Cullen says slowly. "But look, it is not as if rugby defines Barry Gibney. I suppose some people felt that because a rugby field was the only environment they saw him in. And he was a truly brilliant player. It wasn't uncommon for him to run 60 metres with the ball. People remember that. He is a clever guy with a lot of other things going for him. Rugby was just one part of his life and I know he is moving on to bigger and better things. It can be a cruel game. Barry has moved on. I don't think it helps to dwell on the bad things in life anyway."

What are the bad things in life? Sometimes Leo Cullen wonders. Just a few weeks ago, it was as if his worst imaginable fate was visited upon him when he was dropped from the Ireland team on the eve of the Six Nations finale. He felt hollow beyond words afterwards and that bothered him. It also reminded him of what this sport has become to him. One summer when he was about 15 and a beanpole, he ended up kicking football with Kilmacud Crokes. Johnny McGee was the captain. He only came down for a look but Tony Coughlan rooted around in his car and assembled a rag-tag set of gear for this soaring vision for whom he had full-back aspirations.

It was Leo's only real sojourn from rugby and he loved it - "We got to travel and play in some pretty obscure places."

A brief trial in defence led to the conclusion that full forward would be Leo's preferred position.

"They'd thump the ball into me and I would catch and kick. I used to go for goals the whole time. I think I actually finished up with more goals than points."

One time they played a local club and players kept getting themselves sent off. Leo stood on the edge of the big square and counted the diminishing numbers. They abandoned the game with 18 left on the field. The following year, he had grown strong enough to take his place with Blackrock seniors. He has heard Kilmacud did okay despite losing him.

In the grown-up world, Cullen was forced to make several adaptations. He is intelligent and humble and observed the landscape as the game went professional and vowed to do whatever it took to better himself. Jim Glennon invited him to sign his name to paper adorned with the Leinster crest when he was just 19. He was moved from number eight to blindside flanker to lock as the philosophy of the game shifted and he grew into his frame and developed. He gained breathing space with Leinster and enjoyed three seasons with Ireland A.

"I was happy enough with the way things were going but I suppose there were times when I wondered if I was ever going to make the big breakthrough. And when you are younger, there is an element of thinking you are great as well. There was a lot to learn."

Last summer he squeezed into Eddie O'Sullivan's plans for a tour of New Zealand. He was ecstatic. There he earned his first senior international minutes and afterwards, Keith Wood gave him his game jersey to swap so he could keep his own for posterity. When he got a run in a Test match, Mal O'Kelly did the same. Winter minutes against Australia, Fiji and Argentina followed, culminating in his first full cap against Wales in the Six Nations in March. When they pored over the videos, Cullen was reasonably satisfied. He had made more hits than anybody, put himself about and retired nine minutes from time with a knock.

"The thing is I never took my place in any way for granted. I knew Paul (O'Connell) was training with the squad the whole season and was in contention and you know, you just hope you have done enough."

On the day the team to play England was announced, Leo went back to his room after breakfast without hearing any bad news and began to believe he might just be in the clear. Then Niall O'Donovan came to the room and said Eddie wanted a word with him. "It was like a walk of shame down the corridor."

Inside, Eddie awaited, looking pensive and sympathetic. Cullen's stomach churned. Please let him say he is just dropping me to the bench, he prayed. Eddie said this was as hard a decision as he ever had to make . . . Eddie said sorry and wanly joked he knew Leo must have felt like throwing him out of the window. And Leo smiled and confessed he did. But Eddie is famously meticulous; they were probably on a ground floor. Leo made a case for himself and the coach was all ears but they knew nothing could change.

"I don't think I have ever reacted so badly to any news," he says. "I was just so incredibly upset. And I have had really bad news before. I mean, a guy I played with in school, a very good friend of mine committed suicide. And I was naturally very down after something truly terrible like that but for those few hours, I believed I felt worse about getting dropped. And I felt bad about that too. I was thinking, Jesus, does this make me a bad person or something."

A strange few hours followed. Cullen entered a dream world. He was there but wholly elsewhere. Consolations poured in from his team-mates. Even Christy Moore came over before the Wednesday evening concert to have a word with him. Touched and amused by the gesture, Cullen couldn't help laughing. By Thursday, he was back to his normal self, cheerful and self-deprecating and part of the furniture. Those who made the team - and those who hadn't - noticed. It is unlikely he could have grown further in stature had he been selected and played the game of his life. Instead he put on his suit and watched the game in the stands, a fan for the day, awaiting the resumption of his rugby life.

And Leinster, of course, arrived like the cavalry. The light is back in his eyes these weeks. Biarritz last week and Perpignan tomorrow. At 25, rugby has taught him a few facts. It is both a totally unforgiving and fantastically generous sport. And so far, he has walked mostly on the side of brightness. He has seen half the world as a rugby player. And there has been nothing pre-determined about it. The Cullens sent his sister Sarah to school in Killiney because she was the only girl in the small school in Wicklow. Leo might have been sent to Roscrea as easily as Blackrock. It was just the way things fell.

Now, he counts his blessings and works hard to try to ensure they stay true. Life is good. Leinster is as close to one big happy family as any professional sports unit could be. When he leaves the training field, Leo Cullen likes to keep in touch with friends who have concerns outside the game to remind him about the real world. And he likes getting home. Country air.

"Still fond of those Sunday dinners," he smiles.

It is what he knows. This weekend, though, the Cullen family will go to the game. Leo was informed during the week that this semi-final marks his 50th cap for Leinster. He was surprised but doesn't really go in for ceremony,

Earthed as he is, Leo Cullen sometimes wonders when the gods are going to snap their fingers. "Living the dream," he sometimes calls this rugby existence of his.

So tonight Leo Cullen's thoughts will be of Perpignan and he will not be nervous because he knows this: all he will offer is everything he has.