Shane Horgan steps out of his car in fairly trademark fashion. Grinning, he shuffles across the Old Belvedere car park. The dark hair is tousled, there's a three- or four-day growth along his jaw line, and for reasons perhaps not entirely connected with an ankle wound, his right foot is sockless under the sandles he is wearing in the freezing cold.

A hooded Brian O'Driscoll chides him good-naturedly: "I hope your getting the weather you're expecting, Shaggy." Shaggy is a moniker once given him by Ulster centre Jan Cunningham when they roomed together prior to playing for the Combined Provinces against South Africa three seasons ago.

It suits Horgan well, most certainly on this day, for his bohemian appearance aptly reflects his laid-back personality.

Of course, those who know him well in the Leinster set-up say he gets as pumped up as anybody in the dressing-room, which only makes the contrast with his general demeanour all the more engaging. Lately, he's been getting very pumped, and finished off the calendar year on fire and arguably in the form of his, still developing, career.

Leinster's main gamebreaker in the knock-out stages, in the Celtic League final Horgan made three clean incisions against a Munster defence that hadn't conceded a try in almost five games, setting up Leinster's first try with a supporting break and exquisite flat pass to the overlapping Gordon D'Arcy before following up O'Driscoll's chip to deftly score the second.

That try-scoring pass to D'Arcy was classic inside centre play, and aptly demonstrated Horgan's improved handling skills - the one area of his game which up to this season hadn't been of true international standard. He's the first to admit that was the part of his game that has needed the most work and, from pre-season on, says he's never worked harder in his career.

Why? "Because I had to. Everybody else is doing it." The bar is being raised all the time, first by Rob Henderson and then Kevin Maggs. They'll take some shifting, but at 23 Horgan has time as well as the strong-running, hard-tackling talent to go with his 6ft 4in, 15½-stone frame.

Away from the pitch, he's a bit of a Rip Van Winkle, and his infamous ability to nap also says something about his temperament. Modest, and something of a big softie, he attributes his nature to growing up with three elder sisters and a younger brother in Bettystown. Shane Horgan's career will always be associated with a relatively non-typical rugby background. Gaelic football vied with rugby for much of his attention until he left St Francis, a gaelic playing school.

Nevertheless, with a dad from Christchurch, New Zealand, this Meath boy was always liable to get plenty of exposure to rugby as well with local junior club Boyne. He began playing mini-rugby at eight on Saturdays, and gaelic on Sundays, as well as during the week. "Depending on which one was going best for you, that's the one you enjoyed most."

He played through the under-age grades with Meath, but having made the Leinster Youths (under-18s) and then the Irish Youths, Jim Glennon fast-tracked him into the full Leinster set-up. The Fianna Fáil senator can always afford a satsified smile when reflecting on Horgan's career, for he helped shape it as much as anyone. "I have nothing but respect for the man and I'll always owe him a lot," says a grateful Horgan.

After a year cutting his teeth with the Leinster As four seasons ago, he scored a try on his full debut in the 1998-'99 seasonal opener against Ulster. Since then he's only missed eight of Leinster's last 53 matches.

"Mike (Ruddock) gave me a chance which not many 18-year-olds would have been lucky enough to get, and since Matt (Williams) took over it's given me a new lease of life."

By contrast, his Irish career has been a bit of a rollercoaster. He won the first of a dozen caps in a try-scoring debut in that redemptory win over Scotland almost two years ago, but nine of them have been as a reluctant winger, albeit with seven tries to his name.

After his two starts at inside centre, against Japan last season and Scotland last September, he was first dropped and after the latter defeat he was moved back to the wing.

At Leinster, you sense that he feels he's pretty much part of the furniture now, there's an in-built self-confidence with Horgan which he doesn't yet have with Ireland. "It's rugby I love playing. I love the set-up. Because you're with the guys every day you build up a relationship with them on and off the field. I really like that, and the fact that you know each other's games. And because I've been there a few years now you're not afraid to make your point. I feel a little more at ease in the Leinster squad.

"It's funny, I thought I had to wait for a long while (for his first cap) but I look back on it now and I was capped when I was 21, so I obviously wasn't waiting that long, but then to get picked on the wing was a bolt out of the blue. I never saw my career going down that line. The plan always was to work my way into the centre but then to get dropped after the Japan game was a really big disappointment for me.

"It was the first time I had been dropped in any sport and it was just a new experience for me. After being in the scene for that long and getting a taste for it, then it's just very hard not to be involved in it. It was as much a fear that you wouldn't get back in as anything else."

With greater exposure on the international stage has come greater criticism. A sensitive young fellow at heart, he admits he couldn't really cope with the brickbats. "I think my age protected me as well, so I wasn't used to getting a whole lot of criticism."

It reached a nadir with the highly-publicised incident outside a nightclub in Galway which led to a protracted court case. A victim of tabloidesque demonisation, Horgan's name was dragged through the mire. The episode has clearly scarred him mentally and he declines to talk about it. Whatever about the rights and wrongs of the case, anyone who knows him swears by the young fella, that this immensely likeable, easy-going rugby player is utterly unassuming and passive.

The support of his close-knit family and the Leinster squad helped him through it. In any event, when his poor performance in Murrayfield last September led to a hasty televised suggestion that the 23-year-old would never play for Ireland again, he admits he was better able to cope than he would have been before.

"To be honest with you, I was more disappointed with being dropped for the South Africa game (a year ago) than Murrayfield," the mere mention of which prompts a knowing, self-deprecating laugh.

"You know when you don't play well and when you do play well, and coming off the field I knew I had a stinker. Perhaps because I was that little bit older I didn't let if affect me as much as a marginally bad game would have years before. Because I had such a stinker I knew I had to take the flak, but the way I looked at it there was a lot of exciting challenges with Leinster.

"Different experiences affect your life differently. Things go round in cycles and you keep things in perspective. Y'know, I had a really bad rugby game. We didn't play well as a team, I had been playing well up until that but then things didn't go right. I couldn't affect it after the game, so I made a decision not to expose myself to too much media criticism and got on with my game and my life."

Even though Horgan was left a little isolated at times, undoubtedly he didn't do himself justice against the Scots, most of all defensively - Matt Williams rates Horgan as Leinster's best defensive player along with Trevor Brennan. But Williams and Alan Gaffney picked up Horgan piece by piece, poringthrough the video, absolving him of some blame, identifying mistakes (i.e. keep his feet moving much like a tennis player receiving serve on the baseline) and restoring his confidence.

Horgan's typically barnstorming performance the very next Friday in Leinster's 40-10 win over Toulouse and his subsequent form in nine games for province and country (quite possibly the best of his career) are testament to the Leinster camaraderie and the motivational skills of Williams and Gaffney, and also to Horgan's resilience.

For Ireland, he coped manfully with the twinkle-toed Jason Robinson and the menace of Jonah Lomu in an inspirational effort, which was made all the more special by having his Kiwi father in attendance, but the real Horgan has re-emerged better than ever at inside centre with Leinster, scoring tries in the quarter-final, semi-final and final.

"It's the most fun I've had, playing with Leinster, the coaching set-up is great and I've got great friends here. I wouldn't want to play with anybody else, or at any rate I don't see myself playing with any other club. At the moment that doesn't interest me. For life experience one day I might want to but rugby-wise definitely not. There's loads more challenges for me, I hope, throughout my twenties, but I'm enjoying my life at the moment and the way things are going."

All that's missing, you detect, is becoming more a part of the furniture with Ireland.