The World Cup-winning All Black may have seen it all, but he tells CIARÁN CRONINthat the thrill of playing, and winning, with your mates never fades

BRAD THORN, showered and suited after the toil of battle, looks every inch the battle-hardened All Black warrior. Built like a tank, with hands resembling shovels and a jawline apparently moulded from granite, he is a man that would, and indeed has, put the fear of God into all opponents.

But there is something about his appearance, as he stands there, that marks him out as a little different. For around his neck, in much the same fashion as a proud six-year-old who has won something for the first time, hangs a Heineken Cup-winning medal.

“Look,” Thorn seems to be saying,“what I’ve done”.

Sport, from time to time, can make kids of us all but for Thorn, it is precisely that feeling that has kept him playing past his 37th birthday.

“I love a challenge, I love trying to win a title and stuff,” he says of his decision to pitch up at Leinster in March. “But most of all I love the camaraderie. That’s what I’ve loved since I was a six-year-old and that hasn’t really changed. As a six-year-old I used to get nervous before a game and I went out and played with my mates; as a 37-year-old I get nervous before a game and I go out and play with my mates. It’s so special.”

To hear him talk is to understand what he has brought to the Leinster table these past few weeks. For example, his first thought when asked about what it feels like to win the Heineken Cup is for others, not himself.

“I’m conscious of the locks who have done the job all season,” he admits with some sincerity. “I feel for them a bit, that I got here in front of them.”

Thorn is no egotistical World Cup winner either; he feels as though he is the privileged one in getting the opportunity to throw around a ball, and spend some time, with this particular group of players.

“I just enjoy rugby people,” he says. “Wherever you go, even if you went to a third-grade team or something, there’ll be a great group of lads there and they’ll go out and give it their all. It’s always great to be part of all that, and going back to being a kid, it’s the same sort of thing the whole way through.

“It’s special and it’s a privilege to be part of this group, not just the Brian O’Driscolls, the Jonathan Sextons — it’s about the younger guys too. It’s great.”

Right on cue, as though attempting to prove the point, Jamie Heaslip walks past and launches into his ode to this unique secondrow. “He’s Thorny – Thorny, Thorny, Thorny ... so Thorny – Thorny, Thorny, Thorny.”

Thorn laughs and moves on to explain, drawing from his own vast experience of winning teams, what serves to make them successful.

“The fundamentals need to be there to start with, you know, stuff like caring about each other. You’re not going to have an easy season, there’s going to be a lot of tough moments – like today, you see the last five or 10 minutes, you’ve just got to put your body on the line for each other.

“So you need to care about your mates, then there’s work ethic, discipline, sacrifice, humility, being smart, passionate – all those things.

“It’s easy to say those words, but you’ve got to live those words. Leinster live those words, and so did the Broncos, the Crusaders and the All Blacks when I was with them. They were different sides, different styles of teams but all those things shone through.”

Leinster’s style of play has impressed him just as much as the team’s culture. “It’s outstanding, it’s very positive,” he says. “It’s not about negative play.

“This experience with Leinster, it’s cool. You go out there and you play rugby. You’re not going out there to put the other team off, you’re going out there to see how good you can be. I like that.”

Inevitably, talk then turns to Thorn’s future. He is contracted to play for Fukuoka Sanix Blues in Japan next season, another chapter in his epic rugby adventure.

“I would have just been happy with an NRL career, you know, to do some cool stuff over there. I was always a big dreamer,” he says.

“I said years ago I couldn’t have dreamed of what’s happened to me and that was three or four years ago, and now I’m still here.

“Physically I feel good, I’ve been lucky with injuries. But gee, I love a challenge so who knows what will happen. Only God knows what will happen and he can lead me on the way.”

The six-year-old within him doesn’t want to stop going out to play with his mates just yet.