MIKE AVERIScatches up with with the veteran secondrow as he dashes from Murrayfield for Oz and back to Dublin

JUST A shower and a quick rub-down after the final whistle at Murrayfield on Saturday and Nathan Hines will be on his way to the airport. The giant from Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, is going home to spend some time with his mother, who is unwell. By Thursday, however, he will have squeezed his 6ft 7in frame into another aircraft seat and be heading back to Dublin and duty with Leinster.

As a professional rugby player it can be argued the hectic lifestyle comes with the job, but while he is in mid-air Hines will start his 34th year and he admitted this week there had been times recently when life after rugby had begun to cross his mind.

That, however, was before a remarkable summer and autumn which turned things around.

First, after four years at Perpignan, he swapped the French champions for the European ones, moving to Leinster (Brian O’Driscoll seems to have been the recruiting officer) where the reduced playing burden has eased the strain on his body.

Then there was the call-up to join the Lions in South Africa – and then finally the whirlwind of Scotland’s current form under their new coach, Andy Robinson, which has also helped to convince Hines to play on to the next World Cup – his third – and possibly beyond.

Two wins from two this autumn, including last weekend’s victory over Hines’s countrymen – the first time Scotland have beaten Australia in 27 years – have not only done wonders for rugby north of the border but have freshened Hines’s appetite.

“I just want to play on as long as I can,” he says.

However, the most senior figure in Scotland’s matchday 22 has his feet firmly on the ground, and not only because he suffered a dead leg during last Saturday’s win. After 60 caps, he has seen false Scotland dawns before.

He was part of the 2002 squad which beat South Africa for the first time in 33 years, and also in the team that led the Springboks by 10 points at half-time a year ago only to get beaten by what appeared to be a lack of confidence and conviction.

Critically, he was also part of Frank Hadden’s 2007 World Cup team, who were beaten by Argentina in Paris when Scotland, perhaps satisfied with merely having reached the quarter-finals, came close to surprising themselves as well as the Pumas.

Since then Argentina have been on the slide while Scotland are eyeing a rise up the world rankings. So how does Hines see things going tomorrow?

“You can’t go beating Australia and then taking your foot off the gas for the last game of the series,” says the secondrow. However, divining reasons for Scotland’s resurgence is slightly more difficult, especially when Hines is asked to compare the Hadden regime with that of Robinson, the man who replaced him.

Hines at first claims to be stumped, only then to drop heavy hints at a more hands-on management style.

“What’s the difference? I can’t put my finger on it, just like when teams play badly you can’t say it was one thing. You can say what Andy is good at and how he wants you to deliver and train. He’s quite analytical, detailed. Frank would tell you the destination and then give you a bit of room to get there. Robbo plans the journey out for you right down to taking the toilet breaks.”

But that is as far as Hines’s revelations go – except that is for more on O’Driscoll’s role in the move from the south of France.

“I’d just had a word or two with Brian but I was quite worried by the way Perpignan treated Chris Cusiter (tomorrow’s Scotland captain, who also moved from France in the summer),” Hines says.

“After he signed he didn’t get a game and I didn’t want that to happen to me. When I left to go on tour with the Lions I had every intention of going back to Perpignan, but Brian said to expect a call.”