FEATURE: Johnny Watterson talks to Leinster forward Peter Smyth who has overcome serious illness to battle back to the top of his profession.

The night before the operation everybody leaves, family, friends. Lying on the hospital bed, you're thinking. You're thinking you are about to have brain surgery. It's bizarre. You're looking up, looking at the lights, the walls. It's frightening. In the morning you go in. You put on the surgical stockings. You're looking up at faces and the brightness. They talk to you. They smile. Couldn't be better. They reassure you. Yeh, it's frightening. Then you wake up.

"When I opened my eyes, I saw my girlfriend Gillian. I saw my family around the bed. I burst into tears . . . am I alive?"

There has always been rugby around Peter Smyth. It is his profession, his parish, his sport. He's alive to it. Again. After almost a year, two breathless encounters with almost fatal illness and a prolonged confrontation with pain and discomfort, he has reassembled his kit bag, serviced his boots. Smyth is radiating enthusiasm as a professional player, again unbridled, the eight-year-old wannabe at Willow Park bursting a gut for the eye of Father Joe Stanley.

Illness has brought a kind of renewal. It has put ambition in perspective. Now it is a little more refined but the competitive impulse is healthy. The Irish Schools and under-21 hooker traces his finger along the still soft bone and serrated scar on the side of his head.

"When I walked into the dressing-room for the first time after the operation, I'd 48 staples in. They (players) said it looked like some one had put a zipper on my head. To me it was another injury. I've seen guys get cruciates, shoulders. You get your prognosis. You get your operation. You do your rehab and you're back. You look around and see guys like Emmet Farrell, who has had an horrific time with injuries, and Ciarán Scally. A young guy now retired.

"In a way I felt okay about it. Matt Williams (Leinster coach) was great, told me not to worry. There was no question of my contract not being seen through. The union would be there. That was a weight off my shoulders."

The first subtle changes Smyth noticed was when walking through doors and occasionally bumping into the frames. Then, in the mornings when he twisted around to slap his alarm clock, he'd feel a sudden drunken rush in his head. As a passing thought he mentioned it to the Leinster doctor, Arthur Tanner, that he thought he was also going deaf in his right ear. Tanner didn't let it pass. The young hooker was spun out the line to a colleague in Dublin's Charlemont Clinic. Smyth had no deafness. An MRI scan would clear it up.

"I got a call two days later to come in. The doctor said I've a bit of bad news. You've an acoustic neuroma. I looked at this dark shade on the scan and said 'oh my God, am I going to die'. It was a lovely sunny day. July 4th last year. I was dying for the new season. I always ring my dad if I've a problem, a crashed car, a failed exam. I rang him from the sunshine in the garden in the clinic and burst into tears."

A brain tumour above the right ear, a little bigger than a golf ball. It was probably benign, but it had to come out. Smyth was 23, held a record eight Irish schools caps, under-21 caps and A international caps and was pushing Shane Byrne hard for the Leinster hooker's position. In that instant his season vanished, his life twisted. A new arena opened. His competitive nature would be tested.

"You kinda go into auto pilot. You find yourself saying the same thing over and over again to people and you feel like you are saying it in a daze," he says.

On August 10th last year the tumour was removed after six hours in theatre. Naturally fit and strong, his recovery was encouraging, but the head pains refused to diminish as fluid consistently pooled up in the cavity where the tumour had been. Bright light and sound became pernicious enemies.

"Perhaps one of the lowest points was going back in to have the fluid removed. Three or four times I'd to get this stuff sucked out with a tube. A bit of freeze spray just here on my head," he says pointing to a spot above his right ear. "Then they'd drill through the skull to get it out. It was like a dentist's drill. Dizzzzz . . . It was pretty gruesome. I couldn't feel it. I could sense it.

"It was nerve wracking, but I actually got back into training quickly and began to get involved again. Within six weeks I contracted bacterial meningitis."

Driving to his house in Killiney, south Dublin, from a Leinster video analysis session for a game against Welsh side Newport, Smyth found himself bent over the steering wheel. Two or three times he lost control of the car. Pain lacing his body, he struggled into the house. Couldn't eat. Couldn't do anything.

His girlfriend Gillian, who had been unconditionally loyal throughout the trauma of the brain tumour, urged caution, wanted to call an ambulance, but at that stage the player's allergy to hospitals and the despised drilling was still particularly acute. He said no. She dialled 999.

The ambulance first went to Loughlinstown hospital near his home, but when his neurologiacl condition was explained, it set off for Beaumont Hospital to the north of the city. On arrival he had lost co-ordination and all speech.

"We were in Leicester, England, and got a call at about 3.40 a.m.," says his father Jimmy. "It was our son James ringing to say that the hospital were looking for next of kin. We made it back at 8.40 a.m. That night I saw a doctor. I asked him 'how are we doing?' He crossed his fingers."

The killer nature of the disease is in its stealth and ability to avoid detection until too late. The battery of antibiotics and drugs pumped into Smyth's body throughout Sunday and Monday hit the mark. He regained consciousness on the Tuesday morning.

"I just felt so sick. I'd a catheter in. I was on drugs, on steroids. For the first 24 to 48 hours they said they didn't know if I was going to make it. If I'd gone to sleep at home that night . . . I don't know how I can ever repay Gillian for what she did for me. In effect she saved my life."

The tight black hair is now covering much of the scar. Cleo, the Golden Retriever pup, is licking a scratch othe Leinster hooker's leg. Once more he has engaged rugby and life on his own terms.

Last Friday, in a gym fitness test, a couple of PBs tumbled. He bench pressed higher, increased his pace and had lower body fat and a higher weight than ever before. The stone of muscle that wasted away is back, the energy high. He has treaded the shallow waters of recovery, which kicked in at the end of last season when he ventured on to the pitch as captain of St Mary's. In his first competitive match against Garryowen in Dooradoyle, he bounded off the bench and scrummed down. But the pressure of the engaging bodies was too much. He came up with his head spinning. The willingness was there, the strength wasn't. What was precious was simply to be involved, getting mud on the gear.

"The best thing is being back, pulling on the jersey. If you're not involved you're still in the squad and an insider. But you're looking in," he says.

"Whatever the slaggin' I'll get, all I am is a southside county Dublin boy. I judge my calendar year, everything, by rugby. It is so much a part of my life that when Friday nights and Saturdays were taken away from me, I just didn't really know who I was. Last summer I was 23. I thought I was indestructable. I remember talking to Malcolm O'Kelly. He was just back from the Lions tour.

"He came in to hospital. I think he was moved. He said it. He said 'we think we are so indestructable but we're not.' When you're up there you take it for granted. But it's like snakes and ladders. You can fall all the way down."

A scrum cap is the only suggested addition to Smyth's protective gear. Butting heads in the front row won't trigger another growth or bring on the more sinister meningitis.

While the queue has lengthened for the hooker's shirt in Leinster, with Gavin Hickie starting last weekend against Bristol, there is still a strong sense that Smyth's career has come full circle as Williams has named him as a replacement for tomorrow night's Celtic League match with Pontypridd at Donnybrook.

"I used to tap my head and go 'oh my God'," he says. "I tap it now and it's not fully healed, but it will calcify (harden). I'm thinking what if I got a blow on it. My girlfriend says you only get a limited period doing what you love. You don't want to regret. But more I want to enjoy my life again. I grew up near Donnybrook, Lansdowne Road is nearby. My school, Blackrock, is just down the road. Rugby around here is passed from generation to generation, my father to me, his father to him. It's like GAA. It's like a parish. This is where I belong."

He smiles. Things couldn't be better. He's been reassured. He's not frightened any more. No more waking up to hospital striplights and doleful faces. A southside boy smellin' the coffee.