Brothers in arms for a 'full-on' affair

Johnny Watterson talks to a rejuvenated Cork Constitutioncaptain, Ultan O'Callaghan

"If you know Munster rugby like I do, it will be fairly full-on," says Ultan O'Callaghan. The Cork Constitution captain's observation rightly undermines suggestions of any residual team camaraderie between themselves and Shannon borne out of Munster's run in the Heineken European Cup. Team-mates one week, "full-on" the next. You would expect little else from two clubs who have won half of the All-Ireland League titles between them since its inaugural year.

O'Callaghan is in full spate. He has taken pride from watching his younger brother Donnacha's Munster redemption in Beziers after a difficult game last year, pride in his brother's youth and his mental toughness, pride too that Donncha will walk out behind him as part of the Cork Constitution second row, as Ultan leads the team onto Lansdowne Road, finally fit to play.

Last year against Dungannon, Ultan was sidelined with a hand injury. In 1999 he was in peak condition until he collided with some immovable object in the Buccaneers side and knocked out his shoulder a week before the final.

"The disappointment of last year has been a huge driving force with us this season," he says. "It has driven us to try to get back up to prove that we are able to do what we weren't able to do last year. A second bite of the cherry is something you don't get an awful lot of. We're lucky to be out there again and able to contest it."

No doubt. Cork Constitution opened this season with two defeats and like the rest of the competition wondered aloud how the fractured season would turn out come springtime. Was the recruitment strong enough? How would the players react to the contracted lads breezing in with their trophy French and English jerseys? Where was the balance? Could they construct a winning team?

"Last year we sat down and decided on where exactly we needed to improve and we did that. But our selection was always dictated by what was going on at a higher level. We'd 11 contracted players, so had Shannon. It was pretty much "same-as" between the two teams. To manage all the players we used (36) was a hugely difficult thing. For the club to go forward they had to recruit players and had to find guys from the under-20s structure.

"We lost our opening games to UCD and DLSP, then we played 11 games on the trot with 11 wins, and what you find is that the players who got you there are the players you have to try to reward as well. It's not a matter of dropping John Kelly or David Wallace, but sticking with the guys that got you there.

"Ruling players like Jim (Williams) and Ronan (O'Gara) out of contention, we wouldn't really see as a problem because quite honestly the players who got us here are the players we brought in. Frankly, next season they'll probably be the guys we'd be looking at again."

As a rugby provincial development manager, O'Callaghan's concerns extend beyond the walls of Temple Hill. His own career with the Irish under-21 team, Munster and Cork Con was largely amateur, money arriving when most of his best years were probably behind him. To have taken the professional leap would have been alluring and exciting, but a definite gamble.

"Now I'm at 31 years of age and the professional thing kinda came when I was finishing up. I'd just bought a house, had a mortgage and was in a job. The idea of going full-time didn't really appeal. At the time you didn't really know how it (professionalism) was going to go. You're saying to yourself: 'do I stick with the nine-to-five job to get the mortgage paid or do I go out and maybe not get selected or get an injury?'

"I'm happy with my decision," he says "But you'd always love to be on a stage performing like that (Munster)."

In a sense O'Callaghan is on a stage, or, certainly close to the action in his development role and more vicariously through his brother Donnacha, who appears to be at the heart of Munster's beat as well as the club's.

"I'm delighted as an older brother seeing the younger brother do so well. This time last year he was written up an awful lot by the media and when he fell, he fell hard. He's 22 but he's matured a lot. I suppose he's maturing nicely behind Mick Galwey. But I think his apprenticeship is truly over.

"The French are the most physical opponents you will ever play against, and for a 22-year-old second row playing out of position in the back row on that stage speaks volumes for his mental strength. He actually played like a man who had come of age. That's life experience."

Cork Con first won the AIL title just over a decade ago. Back then, O'Callaghan watched as his close friend Victor Donnelly played at number eight. The teenager was up in the stand with Donnelly's father. What he remembers was the buzz of the final. The buzz and the muck. Like any player of 18 years of age, he then looked up to the experienced guys like Pat O'Hara, Dave Corkery, Len Dineen and Barry Howell as the younger players at Cork Con now look up to him.

"I remember the year after that, pushing into the team. They'd about 11 internationals at Con. You worked your way into it," he says. "I'm at the stage now where Pat O'Hara was then, young guys coming in like Donnacha, Joey Sheehan, Frank Hogan, Shane O'Connor and Ken Murphy."

It's a comforting cycle of close friends, club and most importantly continuity, the functioning organs of any club. If anything that's what both clubs have laboured for this season and O'Callaghan is proud that nothing has unravelled on the club. Instead, the season has become one step short of a triumph.

A shoulder intact, an unbroken hand, and the 31-year-old faces his first final, fresh-faced and healthy. And naturally, "full-on" too.