RUGBY WORLD CUP/Denis Hickie interview: Gerry Thornley finds Ireland's leading try scorer unconcerned with records and statistics.Denis Hickie is not one for blowing his own trumpet, nor is he a player who publicly or privately pats himself on the back for achieving record landmarks.

It's not that he's blasé about these things. Instead, he just shrugs them off a little sheepishly, and puts them away for posterity.

Ireland's record try scorer took his tally to 22 last weekend against Romania when he equalled Keith Crossan's haul of 41 caps. On Sunday against Namibia he eclipses Crossan's landmark in becoming Ireland's most capped winger of all time.

"To be honest I didn't know anything about it until (press officer) John Redmond mentioned it to me last week. I suppose records or things like that are more for maybe when you've finished your career. I don't think there's too much time to dwell on it when you're playing. Especially when there's so many games. These things can change on a week-to-week basis. It's not a major thing really."

Quite often, he admits, he wouldn't be aware of his running tally of tries or caps. For sure, tests come quicker these days than in Crossan's time but that said, there's no winger in sight of Hickie's haul at the moment and, four tries clear of his great mate Brian O'Driscoll, at 27 he has a few good years left in him yet.

"He (Crossan) was on the team when I first started watching rugby. I was around nine or 10 and the first match I actually ever went to was the Ireland-France game in 1985 when they drew. He would have been playing in that. Like any young boy I was studying the programme and I could probably tell you what school he went to." Which one? "I presume he went to RBAI."

Not that Crossan or wingers, per se, were his boyhood heroes.

"At that time I was a budding outhalf so the only guy I was actually interested in was a St Mary's man, Paul Dean. I didn't start playing on the wing until I was 16, or even more."

Although he's had more summers off than he'd care to remember (through injury and non-selection for the Lions, his last summer of rugby was in South Africa five years ago) Hickie is the latest example of how a player can probably benefit from an injury-enforced period of absence from the game, especially if it coincides with missing a summer tour and allows for a good pre-season.

Hickie has come back refreshed and playing better than ever in an Irish shirt. He scored just two tries in nine outings last season, but his brace last weekend against Romania took his tally to seven in Ireland's last three games.

It's not only his speed and his finishing; he looks stronger, more confident and more relaxed in himself than ever, and he clearly used his time away to improve the technical aspects of his game such as his line kicking.

"I'm glad I'm playing - every game I get to play is a chance I have to take. That's the way I'm approaching it."

In his current form you wouldn't be giving much odds against him continuing his scoring streak against Namibia on Sunday, though that doesn't enter his mind.

"We've had a good talk about how we're going to approach the match. From our point of view it's important that we improve on our last performance, and that would be the case no matter who we're playing. So in that respect the way we approach this game won't be any different, and that's probably a good thing.

"We'll be judged on stuff that Eddie (O'Sulliavn) has set out for us," adds Hickie, who highlighted the need to improve their ball retention in readiness for the Argentinian game.

Another for whom this is a big game, although it has nothing to do with records or milestones, is Ronan O'Gara. This will be only his second start since June, and he's not only in need of match practice, he'll see this as potentially his sole opportunity to press his claims to supplant David Humphreys as first-choice outhalf.

It would seem a tall order, for no matter how well O'Gara goes, it will be viewed in the context of the opposition, whereas Humphreys hardly sang one bum note against Romania last Saturday in maintaining his rich vein of form in the warm-up games.

O'Gara has been cruelly unlucky. He would surely have gone into the Six Nations as the preferred choice at number 10 after helping to guide Ireland to five of their six pre-Christmas wins, including the victories over Australia and Argentina, but injuries have limited him to just three starts since then, away to Tonga, Samoa and Scotland.

He rates his performance in the searing heat and humidity of Samoa - when scoring 32 of Ireland's 40 points - as his best in an Irish shirt, and drew a comparison between the conditions there and those forecast for Saturday, with temperatures expected to be in the high 20s.

Nevertheless, as a self-confident young man, O'Gara is not prepared to accept his billing as an understudy. When a local reporter asked him about Eddie O'Sullivan deeming him second-choice outhalf, an annoyed O'Gara asked: "When did he say that?" When nervously told, "Last week," he responded: "A week is a long time in sport."

Nonetheless, he accepted he did have something to prove on Sunday. "All the games I've played in have gone well personally and for the team. But I'm still not first-choice at the minute. So yes, definitely, I do have something to prove."

O'Gara himself has done little wrong in the few chances he's had, allowing for an utterly forgivable settling in period at the start of the 29-10 win over Scotland in Murrayfield last month. Indeed, the way he gradually warmed to his task was a measure of his mental strength. The flat pass he gave for Kevin Maggs to score that day as well as the flat skip pass which put Hickie through the Romanian defence for his second try last Saturday in Gosford as a late replacement were reminders of his ability to attack the line and release those outside him.

O'Sullivan is probably weary of repeating his claim that there's never very much between them and that his two outhalves are world-class players, but one would venture that at no stage have the two been playing so well simultaneously.

Meanwhile, yesterday was, ostensibly, a day off for the Irish squad in Terrigal, but these things are relative. As well as a backs' meeting at 8.30 a.m., forwards coach Niall O'Donovan called a lineout session at the same time for about an hour up the road from the hotel.

Culture vultures that they are, most of the squad then took a trip in to Sydney to visit the set of Home And Away. This had been arranged by Ray Meagher, whose character name is Alf Stewart. Meagher is something of a rugby fan who, in the course of his visits to Ireland, has become a friend of the Foley family.

Others went to the Gosford races, which presumably included racing buffs such as O'Gara, Anthony Horgan and John Kelly, while others chilled out on the beach. Reggie Corrigan spent the day rehabbing his bruised shoulder with ice. His participation against Namibia is still touch and go, and a decision will probably be made today.

Rather than take a three-to-four-hour round trip to Sunday's venue, the Aussie Stadium in Sydney, it has been decided that the squad will train as normal today in the Central Coast Grammar school and that only the kickers will visit the match ground tomorrow.