He's cocky, he's young, he's certainly different, he's horizontally laid-back, he has so much talent it's almost scary and he's an all-round good lad. Malcolm O'Kelly should go a long way.

The sky truly is the limit for someone who, at 6 ft 7 in, is a good deal closer to it than the rest of us. For such a big man, he's a naturally athletic footballer. He's a serious talent, and you'd almost be fearful of saying he has the potential to become Irish rugby's answer to John Eales or Ian Jones.

Good in the line-outs - quel surprise - and at restarts, and a high-count tackler, there's not much he can't do. A long-striding rangy runner, with outstanding hands, though perceptibly leftfooted and left-handed, perhaps his one technical weakness is a bit of a loopy pass from right to left.

"But I've been working on that, it's getting better," insists the London Irish player, who swears "I'm a changed man; more organised." Somehow, you can't quite believe him. He's one of those easy-going, forgetful fellows whose mum must surely have said: "Son, one day you'll forget your head."

At times during the development tour of New Zealand and Western Samoa, it seemed O'Kelly forgot everything else at one stage or another. With O'Kelly, packing boots for a game seems an optional extra.

Airport delays were made easier by the regular pageant which featured Pat Whelan good-naturedly giving out yards to O'Kelly for losing air tickets or whatever.

Water off a duck's back to Big Mal, while all his team-mates did "Buddy" impersonations. In Malcolm's world, and you'd wonder whether there were any clouds in it, pretty much everyone is "Buddy".

There's the classic one of his room-mate, Gary Halpin, taking a phone call for O'Kelly from the previous hotel the Irish party had stayed in. O'Kelly had left his wallet behind, so Halpin had them send it on. That evening he asked O'Kelly for a loan. "No worries buddy. Now, where's me wallet?" Halpin watched as for the next couple of days O'Kelly's life continued without the wallet. No worries buddy.

The O'Kelly legend, admittedly, is in danger of becoming apocryphal. There goes the story of the game against Western Samoa, when O'Kelly went on a long dribble. At the next scrum, as the Irish pack went down, O'Kelly is reputed to have said: "Check out the football skills."

He flatly denies having said that. "I might have said: `hey, Georgie Best, check out the football skills' when watching the video afterwards, but I'd never have said it during the game."

A sleepy looking giant perhaps, but you daren't take him entirely at face value or too lightly. Ask him how he perceives others take him and he says: "It works two ways. I get slagged but I can say blunt things and get away with saying something that might be considered nasty, but nobody's offended."

Ask him if he really is as laidback as he seems, and O'Kelly responds: "I've worries like the next man but I keep them to myself." Beneath the laid-back, jokey, almost goofy exterior then, he's a sharp young man with innate self-belief.

Groomed by first mini-rugby and then Templeogue College, O'Kelly arrived at St Mary's as a gangly, willowy, cocky, yet shy lad with long hair down to his shoulders and an attitude to match.

Ciaran Fitzgerald arrived as coach about the same time. "We put him into the first team straight away. He was the first from that crop of young players. There was a lot of debate at the time; 19-year-olds weren't meant to be put in straight away, particularly second-rows."

"We spoke to his parents about it but they didn't mind and he certainly didn't mind. I remember his first game was against Old Belvedere in a friendly. I asked him would he be up to it. He said: `Is Franno (Neil Francis) playing?' I said yes and he said: `Then I'm your man.' It didn't bother him.

"He had the attitude and the ability. He has a strong mind and just goes after it. There was a certain shyness about him combined with a cocky nature which I think, along with the off-the-cuff remarks and the practical jokes was a bit of a cover. Sometimes you wouldn't know what was going on in there. He's in a world of his own. But he's a smart fella and was always watching and listening.

"He was a bit stringy and gangly then but once his upper body developed, as it has now, then I knew he'd be the finished article. He's a fine player. A great athlete. It used to be the front five but now I think of it as the back five and he's the modern second-row; an athletic ball player."

His first senior second-row partner, Steve Jameson, conveys much the same impression of the young O'Kelly. "I remember we were sharing a room for our first away AIL game, staying up in Belfast the night before we played Ballymena. I was the senior player but he expected to get the double bed. There was nearly a fight over it."

"He's a tough little divil underneath it all, with a super pair of hands. Even then he was always oozing confidence and that's the way you gotta be nowadays. When he was playing with Mary's and the games were free-flowing he enjoyed them. But we noticed that when the games were tough and physical he could come up short.

"But he's beefed up a lot now and he had to get that way to survive. It's a different game now. When I started everyone said a lock's peak would be at 34. That's rubbish now. The modern lock will reach his peak at 26 and won't last much beyond 30. It's so much faster and there's a lot less pushing and shoving. Mal's approaching his peak. He could be as dynamic as Jeremy Davidson although he will never have that build."

Almost perversely then, in many ways the life of a full-time professional somehow seems to suit O'Kelly. He is not one of life's nine to fivers, and admits that the onset of the professional game saved him from life as a qualified civil engineer.

Last season, he shared a London Irish house with Jeremy Davidson, Gabriel Fulcher and Kieron Dawson, and describes it as "a bit hectic. At times it seemed half of London Irish were staying there."

So he moved in with Ken `The Legend' O'Connell. O'Kelly can now be found, renting in advance of buying a place in Wilton, on one of the floating houses on the Thames in Hampton. Seriously. Somehow, for someone with his head in the clouds, it seems utterly appropriate that his feet aren't on the ground. Malcolm is one of life's floaters, and you'd envy his attitude to life.

So, going to London Irish and taking on the life of a professional tallies with his adventurous spirit. He's also prepared to work hard on his game. He'll always be a wiry looking player, but even as recently as in New Zealand, he was a shadow of the more muscular player of today.

"Things are going well. It's been hard work, I'll not deny that. But I'm beginning to enjoy the fruits of my labour. I'm a lot stronger than I was this time last year. I'm also a bit more wise about the game, and I've a bit more confidence in my abilities."

This time last year, O'Kelly was on the verge of that seemingly inevitable first cap. But the broken ankle which sidelined him for three-and-a-half months, not to mention Davidson's ill-fortune this week, shows that "you can never take anything for granted".

"I wouldn't get up at the crack of dawn and for the first three weeks I went home to my ma. I needed someone to watch out for me, to feed me, and I had a bit of crack with my mates.

"It was a learning experience for me. It was the waiting process, day by day, just waiting for the days to go by quicker. I probably rushed things a bit too much. I was doing weights once or twice a day. I played a lot of Sega (games) and more or less just chilled out and took it easy. But the games were hell to watch."

One week he trained "like a lunatic" and his achilles swelled up. Eventually, O'Kelly made it back by mid-April, but a couple of outings for London Irish was scant preparation - mentally as much as physically - for a Development tour which he approached gingerly.

"I was unsure as to how my ankle was. I didn't think it was right. It needed something to wake me up due to my easy-going nature. I struggled through the first week of intensive training. I got a lot of physiotherapy but I was quite down in the dumps."

The tour was almost slipping by without the expected O'Kelly impact. "When I didn't get selected for the game against the Maoris I stopped acting like an eejit. I copped on and then against Western Samoa, I did all right."

He's selling himself a bit short there. O'Kelly had a huge game, all the more so given the sweltering heat, stifling humidity and the condition he'd arrived on tour in. Winning a bulk of line-out ball, tackling non-stop and popping up everywhere, after an hour he hauled down Junior Paramore over 60 metres before the quickfire Samoan flanker offloaded a try-scoring pass.

Cue the start of this season. "I felt really good; eager, fit, and strong. Everything was good, y'know." After a good seasonal opener against Richmond, he was moved to number eight for the Sale game and Irish's first five Conference games before reverting to lock against Stade Francais and Gloucester. There he had Sky's Stuart Barnes and Dewi Morris positively purring in appreciation.

There was the try-saving race to the touchdown against Raphael Saint-Andre; the intercept by the left touchline; the clean takes of their own and Gloucester's restarts, and the usual high quotient of close-in tackles. But he sets his own demanding standards and he was disappointed he couldn't assume more of the closein running role which was lost when Davidson went off.

"I know what my own abilities are. I know I haven't reached my potential yet. I believe in myself but I know what I have to do to improve. I need to become more decisive in my play. I can defend like a lunatic for 80 minutes, no problem. I'm a good support player but I've got to be able to offer more."

To that end, he reckons the stint at number eight helped him become "more decisive" even if "I knew it would rule me out of a cap or two."

Maybe not, especially with the ill wind of Davidson's injury, though O'Kelly might well have made it for the All Blacks game anyway. We shall see.

That first cap and, touch wood, a lot more besides, remain a question of when rather than if; and would get a bit of a monkey off his back.

"A lot of people ask if I'm an international and the answer is a very long story instead of a nice short one. It would be very sweet to get a cap." And debuting against the All Blacks certainly wouldn't phase him. "I'd do my very best. Playing them would be even more of a challenge. They're the best in the world. Nothing to lose. If you do well against them you're going to be a celebrity."

No worries buddy.

Factfile

Born: 19/7/74 in Essex, England.

Educated: Templeogue College.

Height: 6 ft 7 in.

Weight: 16st 5lbs.

Clubs: St Mary's, London Irish.

Representative Honours: Leinster, Ireland under-21s, Ireland A.