VICTOR COSTELLO's entry point into Irish rugby was Blackrock College. They bred him. When winter fell all the talk around the school was of the Senior Cup team. If you were on that team you were feted, but you had to carry the school's Leinster Cup ambitions on your shoulders. If you needed, little favours along the way the school saw you right.

In his final year Costello was housed in Blackrock College. Room 40 in the Castle, his dormitory for a college year, was heaven on earth. From the Castle, Costello and his two room mates could hear the clang of metal from the adjacent weights room and almost smell the sweat. They passed their hours dreaming of a St Patrick's Day Cup final at Lansdowne Road and rugby.

Blackrock Shopping Centre was as much part of their universe as The Castle. Sion Hill girls, their socks rolled down, in a huddle in the coffee shop corner smoking cigarettes. Bunking off and checking out the talent. School was about more than lessons.

"I was a bit of a rogue then," says Costello. "You know if I could get away with anything I would. You might miss the odd religion class for a game of pool somewhere. A bit of mischief. Nothing too bad."

Costello sits in the coffee shop now and surveys his old haunt. He hasn't been back since 1989 when he walked through the gates of the school for the last time. He recalls that final year being a good one for the Senior Cup team too. He has surpassed most schoolboy dreams and, at 26, has played for Ireland five times.

But now Costello is in a coffee shop in Dublin and his Irish colleagues are in the Algarve for warm weather training in the run up to today's game against Italy. While Victor is looking around, drawing comfort from the familiarity of the centre, his colleagues are fattening up their thin winter blood in the Portugal sun. Cold comfort indeed.

Before the squad was announced three weeks ago Irish manager Pat Whelan rang up Costello and told him he was off the panel. Rob Henderson, Eddie Halvey and Shane Byrne received similar news. Four heads rolled. No PR cover ups by the management. No kid's glove treatment. No effort made to soften the blow.

The players had been dropped because their fitness levels were not satisfactory. It was a source of public embarrassment for them all. They were professional players who, it appeared, just didn't train hard enough. The backdrop of an Irish team notorious for falling away in the final quarter didn't help.

"I'm not happy with the situation at all. I feel ashamed that it's happened. But it's happened and I've dealt with it. I will never let it happen again," says Costello.

"But when Pat Whelan rang me up everything he told me was positive, not negative. He said we know your qualities as an attacking forward. We need more of this in defence. To play international rugby you're defending 50 per cent of the time. You are not defending because you are not fit enough. He said `you're not going to the Algarve because all we're doing is fitness assessment and you'd be better off training'."

"I'm pissed off in one way and delighted in another way. I was really disappointed and I was shocked. But when he explained it, I took it for what he said."

Aerobic fitness has always held a tear for Costello. "In any terms the `bleep' test is one of the worst things ever," he says, "in my life - not just sport." He is a big, hulking, affable mountain of a fella. Look at his dimensions and you can see that stressful scientific runs would bear down more heavily on his frame than most. Put him in a weights room and he becomes dynamic.

"Fitness has always been a problem. I arrived down to St Mary's when I gave up athletics and struggled from day one. But gradually, year by year, it has become less and less of a problem. Now it's caught up with me this year because I'm playing at a higher level and I'm exposed."

For Byrne and Halvey the training schedules have been as much assault courses as regimes to enhance fitness. At a session in Belfast at the beginning of the season a maul collapsed on Byrne, pinning him down on his side.

"It was a freak accident. I popped ribs down my chest. Cracked my sternum. Popped ribs in my back and cracked bones there too. I wasn't allowed to do anything. Even breathing hard could irritate the fracture in my sternum."

Like Costello, Byrne had an image of slothfulness. The eight week break could not have helped, but before the hooker was felled, he had been reaching his targets.

"People definitely have a certain image of me. But I want to make it perfectly clear that I was doing everything I was meant to do. Back when I was young and starting it may have been the case that I didn't do everything, but never to the extent that people thought. Over the last two years the responsibility has been on me contractually and there has been no lack of effort."

Halvey, too, shipped an injury at a session. A chipped bone in his ankle made it painful to train at the tempo and frequency that fitness trainer Alan Clarke required. Seven weeks went by and tore the heart out of the season leading up to Christmas. But Halvey does not offload it all on to his ankle. Like the others, he is contrite and also a little wiser to the sharper teeth of the Irish management.

"It has been difficult to stick to the fitness programme with all the matches with Shannon and whatever. But at the end of the day it's what you have to do. You accept these things when you become a contracted player. You've got to keep levels up. You've got to learn to accept it and that's that... Possibly I could have done a bit more."

Fighting off the flu now won't enhance Halvey's fitness in the short term. But like, most of the players on the squad, the Five Nations this year is one of the smaller peaks before the World Cup in 1999. No less important or lucrative than it ever was, the Championship continues to hold a strong orbit, but as each tournament goes by the shadow cast by the World Cup is becoming bigger.

Even at this stage, that is where players are looking. Their recent demise has had a galvanising effect. No tears have been spilled. They may have drawn solace from cursing Whelan, coach Murray Kidd and the dreaded `bleep test' in driving sleet in Sunbury or Limerick, but they have accepted it as professionals. More importantly they have aspired to react like professionals, too.

Costello, particularly, in his open and boyish way, has embraced the slight as a spur. "People have been down before and have come up. Paddy Johns was out at one stage. So was Conor O'Shea. There's talk of Eric (Elwood) back contending, too. These guys have been down and up. That's the way rugby is. So when I got the message from Pat Whelan I was determined to nail this fitness thing. I'm glad now that I was able to crack it. Sometimes I'd doubts and I wondered if I'd ever be fit. I've been hearing it for all of my life. But I've gotten down there and I'm doing the work," he says.

"I would have felt I was fit enough to go to the Algarve," says Byrne. "I felt I would have been up to it, but there is no point in arguing. They had due course to say no. They said I wouldn't be up to the level. Eight weeks out, doing absolutely nothing... It can put you back an awful way. There was nothing more said. I didn't look for any more information. We're professionals now. We have to take it that way. I can't have problems with it. I can't. It's my job. There's no more I can say.

Windows of opportunity. That's what it comes to now. Costello muscling his way into a regular number eight London Irish shirt. Byrne demonstrating to Blackrock that there is now no reason to have him on the sideline and Halvey sticking his head above the rest at Shannon.

Each man is sensitive about the subject. They understand that an image takes a second to crystalise and an eternity to break down. They also know that they have to wait to be called. Someone will play in their position against Italy today and they may play well. Jumping through hoops in Sunbury is a long way from being the centre of focus for Kidd and Whelan. Patience will play its part.

Costello leaves the coffee shop, into a New Year's Eve snow shower, to train at UCD. Probably won't be back again for a long time. Once again he's shouldering hopes.

Not those of a schoolboy, but those of a man with a career to advance and a livelihood to safeguard.

Like Halvey, Byrne and Henderson, his hopes are hardened now. In the old days he might have put his ample body into the sharp breeze, pulled a face and said to himself "one day off won't hurt". He has found to his cost that it does.

He flew to Dublin on the 23rd and flew back to London on the 26th. He ran on Christmas Day, but skipped the GOAL mile at Belfield. Every year he had run it and every year he had improved his time. But this year he didn't need John O'Shea announcing the celebrity times over the PA system as they crossed the line. He says he would have smashed his old mark, but he just didn't need a fitness test on Christmas Day. Didn't want any more people focusing on his training.

"My road to getting back up there won't be as hard as say having been dropped for a bad game," he says. "I've got experience. I've proved I can play at international level. They know I can cope.