Gerry Thornley talks to Aidan McCullen, who came back into the Leinster reckoning with a stirring display against Bristol last week

It was only October but already Aidan McCullen thought his chance had gone. Dropped from the Leinster squad after three successive defeats, McCullen didn't even go to the Newport game two weeks ago, so when he was given another chance against Bristol, he told himself he was at the last-chance saloon.

Leinster coach Matt Williams and forwards coach Willie Anderson had let McCullen stew on his omission for two games and even when Eric Miller was injured last week, they pointedly delayed their decision about the number six jersey.

Going into the Bristol game, he knew he had to make it count, and said it to his father, who worried whether he might be putting undue extra pressure on himself.

"But actually it helped me to concentrate." The ball fell his way he admits, more than is normal for a blindside flanker, but he made the most of it with a big, ball-carrying display. At last this talented, ultra-fit and committed back-rower had shown he could play at this level.

Modesty forbids him from blowing his own trumpet too loudly. "I got a chance against Connacht but we just didn't perform well as a team, so it was very hard to play well in it. I'm not being easy on myself there, but for me to play well playing on the front foot behind a really good tight five makes it so much easier. That's why I got my hands on the ball so much, because the likes of Mal (Malcolm O'Kelly) and Leo (Cullen) just do so much work."

Nevertheless, he likes to think it was a breakthrough game, and when pushed, admits: "I was happy with my ball-carrying."

It was a bit surprising when McCullen was called ashore in the 66th minute to be replaced by Des Dillon, but he admits he'd run himself into the ground. "I was absolutely wrecked. At half-time I just said to myself 'I'm going to give it loads' because I thought he'd bring on Des at some stage."

Formal recognition came by way of the Players' Player of the Match award, courtesy of his Leinster team-mates. It needed something out of the ordinary to provoke this, as the last name on the tankard was Peter Coyle for the game against Glasgow in the Celtic League opener of last season, 25 games ago.

At 25, McCullen hasn't exactly been an overnight success story, though he's played for all-conquering Leinster schools and Irish under-21 sides.

He has a degree in French and German, as well as a diploma in Business Studies. He played for a year in Dax and is Leinster's unofficial translator on trips to France even when, as happened once, a flustered Leinster manager Ken Ging didn't realise he was being spoken to in English by a local official.

McCullen hails from a Gaelic background in Gormanstown in Meath; his father John played occasionally for the county. And it was only because his father's work took him to Dublin - where he's a superintendent in the Phoenix Park - that McCullen went to Castleknock.

His parents had differing preferences for St Declan's, very much a Gaelic school, and Castleknock. His father won and McCullen took up rugby when he was 12. But what really made McCullen take to rugby was a Leinster Schools' tour to Australia with John McClean as coach.

"We hammered everybody, New South Wales, ACT and Queensland. It made me wonder why, at the time, we weren't more successful at senior level. But then again, most of those lads have given up. So there you go."

Not McCullen though. "I trained twice a week and played in every game in the second row. I actually loved it."

On his return he went to Trinity College, Dublin, to study French and German, but joined Lansdowne immediately. "A little bit of a regret not playing for Trinity for a year or two. My experience of Trinity wasn't very college-like. I'd go to my class and go to my gym or to Lansdowne."

After his third year at Trinity, McCullen went to Germany for four months and from there "was hooked up with Dax by Donal Spring. So they called me in Germany and I got a train from Cologne to Dax. I was looked up and down like a horse at a sales ring, and brought in for a press conference.

"They discussed my contract in front of me without realising I spoke French. When I butted in, in perfect French, and told them that this really didn't suit me, they were embarrassed into giving me better terms."

It wasn't just the conversion to professionalism and to the back-row that changed him. "It totally changed my perspective on rugby and how to play, my hands and my speed and everything. The coach, Jean-Louis Luneau, was very hard.

"I trained in the morning, had my lunch in the club restaurant, go to the beach, come back and train, have my dinner in the club restaurant and went home. It was a small town though and lonely enough. I lived with a guy who fell in love with a French girl and disappeared," he says,"so I had to get a French girlfriend."

He started 12 of Dax's 24 first division games, and appeared as a replacement in eight others. Subsequently, finishing his degree in French was a doddle. If he's one regret, it was not then taking up a contract offer from Declan Kidney at Munster, wrongly, as it transpires, believing that his business studies at Carysfort College would conflict with it.

Glenn Ross at Connacht and subsequently Steph Nel had also offered him contracts at Connacht. An AIL final run with Lansdowne, the constant encouragement of Michael Cosgrave, who took a chance with him ahead of Stephen Rooney, kept him going.

Playing for the Irish Sevens in Hong Kong and elsewhere was, he says, "a huge lift mentally".

But the queue for the number eight or six jerseys at Leinster was a lengthy one, what with Victor Costello, Eric Miller, Trevor Brennan and Declan O'Brien. True he had five sporadic starts last season (none of which Leinster lost) and four appearances as a replacement, but only with the departure of the latter two and Ireland's international call-ups this season has he really had a belated opportunity at this level.

Fearful of making any mistakes in previous opportunities, he wouldn't go those extra few yards but last week was time to start pumping the legs. "I've had a bit of an attitude shift lately. I'd always been getting huge scores in my explosiveness and that but I wasn't putting it onto the pitch. I had it in the gym. Last week I went on to the pitch thinking it was time to shit or get off the pot basically." And that he did.