It's hard to believe, but today Malcolm O'Kelly will be the most experienced player in Ireland's starting line-up. Gerry Thornley finds that added  responsibility agrees with the lineout specialist.

It's gone past the appointed starting time. All the Leinster players are out on the Old Belvedere pitch ready to start training. Save for one. No prizes for guessing who. Malcolm O'Kelly is nowhere to be seen and an irate Matt Williams storms off into the dressing-room to find Big Mal stretched out and catching 40 winks.

Williams berates him, telling O'Kelly to shift his ass. Quick as a flash, O'Kelly looks up and says: "Matt, can I not just spend a few quiet moments communicating with my creator?" Even an enraged Williams can't keep a straight face.

Yep, lives in his own world, albeit a nice world. Likeably engaging, and very sharp, his laid-back image may convey an impression that he doesn't care as much, but this would be wrong. "I'm just not as outwardly stressed or as emotional as other people, which is an advantage on some occasions. I think people who are always stressed suffer a lot."

It's because of his make-up that you can't think of him as anything but one of the Irish team's young tyros. Yet we've known him a long time now. Longer, perhaps, than we sometimes realise. Today, Malcolm O'Kelly wins his 45th cap, making him the most experienced player in Ireland's starting line-up. Fitness permitting, he'll hit the half-century mark during the Six Nations. Big Mal, a 50 cap veteran. Ye Gods.

David Humphreys, currently on 47, might just pip O'Kelly to the landmark but even so O'Kelly would then become the country's 13th most capped player of all time, whereupon he'll start rapidly rising through the ranks.

Despite missing the 1999 Six Nations through injury, he'll reach 50 caps quicker than any other Irish player and, at 28, he'll be the youngest by some distance to reach the mark. Keith Wood, the most recent player to hit 50 caps, took just over eight years to get there. Like him, the previous 10 were all in their 30s and required at least a decade. O'Kelly is on course to do it in under five and a half years.

As much as anything, this is a testimony to the greater number of internationals being played nowadays, but it's also a tribute to an innate physical talent which team-mates have good-naturedly described as "freakish".

Last week, his mother Mary recalled St Mary's members forecasting that her teenage son would play for Ireland and wondering could it possibly be true. "I remember those days myself," says O'Kelly. "Free drink" was the height of it, he quips. Approaching a half-century? He never even countenanced it.

"I don't feel it, but you do change. The longer you play, you find yourself being told: 'You were there three years ago, or you were there at the last World Cup', and I think, 'Yeah I was and what I say can be valuable'. Experience brings a lot, and I'm beginning to understand it now.

"You do begin to look around and realise all the guys with experience have gone now and there aren't many who are more experienced than me. It's a process, you know, and eventually my day will end and someone else will come along."

Added responsibility seems to agree with him. His lineout work - his bread and butter - has been simply world class. He's been as hungry as ever in the loose, but making a bigger impact, with a rampaging 40-metre gallop for Leinster being the pick of his three tries this season.

"I've always thought I was a consistent player. I think though that at times in a game I could lose concentration. I've had to really look at myself, and Eddie (O'Sullivan, Ireland's coach) has helped me a lot because he doesn't accept it, and he's right. You have to focus and you have to concentrate. You might think you're concentrating, but you're not, you're somewhere else."

Somewhere else? With O'Kelly, that's easier to believe than most. "One of Matt Williams' many sayings is: 'What are you thinking? And what should you be thinking?' I might be thinking about my girlfriend or something unrelated to rugby. And once you get that clarity, it's easier to do your job. Catch your kick-offs, or make the right call for a lineout, or work to get in the right spot, get in the right position to take the ball on. It's just an alertness and an awareness that comes from concentrating and focusing."

It's a safe bet that Williams had O'Kelly's propensity for giving away penalties in mind. An inveterate sinner, if seemingly a reformed one, he's still kicking himself for giving away one of the three-pointers against Australia.

"That was disappointing, but I don't think I'm top penalty 'giver-awayer' like I was in the English league, up there with Neil Back and Budge Pountney," he says with a self-deprecating smile. "Hopefully those days are gone."

Down to improved concentration again? "Concentration and a kick up the arse. Coaches don't accept that. And they're right. There were a lot of stupid penalties. Half the time it was just frustration, a keenness to win the ball."

Like a scrumhalf who judges his game first and foremost by his passing, so lineout play supersedes all else for O'Kelly. Compared to last season's struggles in the Six Nations, the success so far he attributes to the hard work of team-mates and coaches, though he reckons this is also one area where the Northern Hemisphere currently reigns.

"I think lineouts have changed. You see New Zealand, South Africa and Australia, they're not winning their lineout ball."

By comparison, O'Kelly says, more specialist lineout men in the Northern Hemisphere, such as Scott Murray, Ben Kay and Danny Grewcock, work much harder at attacking opposition ball.

"Last season we couldn't win bloody lineout ball. There were holes, there were other lineout options, but you have to be so cute. I think we are a little cuter than the Southern Hemisphere but you can bet that when the World Cup comes they'll be cute as well."

Rarely do you seem him down on himself, or becoming introspective, but a notable exception was the Lions tour. His only real chance was slightly out of position at the front of the lineout against the Australian A side, and you could tell within minutes of the kick-off that his body language was all wrong. His performance was devoid of his customary gut-wrenching desire for work. Hangdog and hunched, he hardly looked interested.

There were mental and technical factors. For all the advice he'd sought beforehand, there was a touch of naivety or niceness about the way he hadn't got his head adjusted to the internal competitiveness that awaited him. And the defensive systems in Irish rugby had not prepared him for the highly structured methods which Phil Larder and Graham Henry were applying.

Ultimately he was left to impersonate Australian lineout or defensive opponents in training for the latter weeks, and that tour probably hurt him more than he'll ever let on publicly. Perhaps affected by self-doubt and failure more than at any stage in his career, he suffered a mental hangover for months. Yet it was an eye-opener, and character-forming as well. It also made him the player he was last season, most notably against England, and in every game this season.

"It's true, it's true. I spent a lot of time thinking about what went wrong. At the time I felt hard done by, and I don't know anybody who wouldn't. I look at it now and I think my attitude probably wasn't right then. I didn't know what to expect to be honest. I hadn't a clue. It's sad in a way that it's a long way away before there'll be another one. But shit happens. It's gone. You have to get over it."

No better way than playing well and winning, especially against England. "Definitely, last year, it helped me a helluva lot, even in the Leinster games. Keep working, keep proving yourself. But you can't keep going on that. Eventually that drains away, and I don't think it's a good thing to work solely off anger." He's moved on to a new level this season. "Now it's a case of just enjoying it, training, gettingstuck in, and proving yourself."

He's not always planning how to fill in gaps between training sessions, instead resting up and focusing more on what his profession demands of him.

It's a great life, he admits, though he'd like it if it was less all-consuming, and he had more time to spend with Stephanie. He has an active, offbeat mind. He's a qualified civil engineer but hasn't a clue what he's going to do when his playing career is all over. He's not looking over the mountain top just yet. Not as he's getting closer and closer to it.