Denis Hickie's return from injury is timely. Johnny Watterson talks to the Leinster and Ireland winger.

Donnybrook Fair in Dublin's Ross O'Carroll Kelly belt. Upstairs, Denis Hickie is having breakfast with Leinster prop Emmet Byrne. Double Expressos in thimble-sized glasses with chrome holders sit on the table. Jumbo breakfast rolls and steaming pots of tea smack of amateurism and six-month-long Lions tours - just not 2006.

Both players, they say, carefully watch what they eat. Lunch boxes. That sort of thing. Looking at the pair you couldn't think any differently and even the Leinster and Ireland winger, who is coming out of the final stages of rehabilitation, is again developing the telltale scalloped cheeks of a professional athlete. The crutches have been cast aside. He's walking, running, tackling, sniffing for his starting place with Leinster and Ireland. But for the moment Hickie has kind of slipped down his chair.

You say, "You look wrecked, Denis."

"Do I?" he asks and extravagantly yawns. It's Wednesday, the Leinster recovery day, the day the players scatter and do as they wish. Yawning is permissible. Slinging yourself over the bench like a throw is allowed.

These are again bright days for Hickie. Last week was the first time in three months he was back in the programme, wrapped in the weekly comfort blanket of team routine. After three months out, it becomes a renewable experience. The thought of being included as a performer redecorates Hickie's week in the run-in to tomorrow's game at Bath.

"I didn't really have any dark days where I wondered, 'Am I going to be back?' I didn't have dark days with the other injury either (ruptured Achilles). Bill Quinlan was in charge of the operation and he was in charge of the last one as well.

"He said straight away, 'You've dislocated a bone (fibula at knee joint). It will go back in. You'll be fine.' That gives you confidence. Especially from someone you trust. Injury is just a part of rugby now. Everyone goes through it. The funny thing was that people seemed to think I've been injured more than I have been. People were coming up to me in the street saying, 'It's terrible, what with you just coming back from the last injury.' But actually I played a whole season last year.

"Played about 30 games. Didn't miss one match and went on the Lions and didn't get injured. I'd a complete injury-free season and people thought one injury just rolled into the other."

Hickie has always naturally maintained a pragmatic carapace, an outer-core defence mechanism that works for him in hard times. But you press him: remind him of the Newbridge teenager Rob Kearney, who filled the left-wing hole when Hickie was in Leinster's sick bay with physio James Allen working him over.

Hickie watched for three months as Kearney's talent and precocity made the hole look smaller than it should have been. Hickie rehabbed. Kearney stole the show. Kearney is 19; Hickie will be 30 in a few weeks' time.

There could have been good grounds for his 51 caps counting for nothing, his valuable experience just part of a glorious past and his position with Leinster and Ireland desperately slipping out of view. He might have gone into himself. The head could have dropped. But it didn't.

"I was under pressure to get back, so my mind didn't wander," he says. "The last time it was long-term and I was basically given the whole year off. Sure, Rob's a real good player and in a few years he'll be a fantastic player. He's one of the finds with Jamie Heaslip and Andrew Trimble.

"But I don't look at it that way. I don't look at the situation with envy. I look at the way things are. Pragmatic. I'm glad he's in the same squad as I'm in and not in any other."

Match-wise, Hickey is not yet where he wants to be. He is still searching for the little things, the separation points that make him better than good. The instinctive moves are still cobwebbed. Physically and mentally he is combat-prepared, but the characteristics that define him as a game-breaking winger are still in the wind. Almost like an artist, nothing can be forced. Hard as they try it's not there, it can't be found. Then one day, unannounced, it returns and it's there once again sparking great things. He knows that touch is out there. He's patient.

"There was only one criterion I used before I came back playing," he says. "In terms of match fitness I wasn't fit and I wasn't particularly sharp sitting on the bench for a few games. There were a lot of things I wasn't.

"The only thing I said to Checks (Leinster coach) was that I wasn't going to come back until my speed scores were the same as before I was injured. That's the only bench mark I was using. Once the scores were there I'd worry about the fitness and the sharpness through the games. But for someone who relies on a little pace to get through sometimes, I would not have come back if the scores were not what I wanted. There was a sense of relief they were there, but I would have kept working another two or three weeks until they were where I wanted them to be. Last week was the first time I had a proper match week. You fall into a whole team way of thinking. There's security in that."

It is the now that presents Hickie with the more immediate projects. Starting against Bath is the first objective. Accomplished. Now it's securing his place on a reduced Ireland squad and after that it's playing against Italy. It doesn't stop. He then needs to play well in the telling matches and maintain his level until the World Cup in 2007.

Like it is for wingers Tommy Bowe, Trimble and Kearney, that is a goal and a challenge. But Hickie is in possession and long ago he has learned not to expect, but to endure. And so much is changing. The team he left in Leinster has evolved into something different. The Ireland team is a different animal again.

He's 29 years old and maybe seen as one of the best wingers to have played for Ireland, but Hickie is allergic to complacency.

"Every player has a finite career. The World Cup is what I am aiming towards in terms of knowing that I won't be playing much longer after that. That's what I'm really focusing on anyway. I'm not really thinking in my head about it, but the next goal is the World Cup and after that I'll see what happens. Maybe I won't want to play after the World Cup.

"I'll wait and see how I feel and that's If I get to it. There's no guarantee I'll be here this year, never mind two years. I'm very aware of that. Depends on injury, how I'm playing , how others are playing. There's a lot of factors outside yourself.

"Sure, the players you mention (Shane Horgan, Hickie, Brian O'Driscoll, Gordon D'Arcy) are going to change and especially in my position. Maybe three or four years ago there wasn't such an abundance. Now there's Tommy Bowe, Rob. Trimble plays on the wing. It changes. We have a good backline, had good success. None of those players take it for granted. No one is in a position to do that."

Blue Skies. Outside the box. That sort of thing. Easy on the eye and increasingly effective, the cashmere-sweatered Cheika and the "Gosh, Are Those Pyjamas You're Wearing?" David Knox have brought their own redesign to Leinster rugby. The redevelopment of style, tactics and what is expected from players as well as the entertainment value have put fizz into the squad and bodies in the RDS. For Hickie that makes an important difference and life interesting. Ten years ago he made his European Cup debut in Melrose against Scottish Borders. That's a lot of gym work, a lot of team meetings.

"You often say to yourself, 'I don't want to do this' or 'I wish I didn't have to do that'," he says. "When I was younger I used to get very nervous before matches. I loved training and in the gym, the whole buzz of that lifestyle. When the games came I used to hate the build-up. Now the only thing I look forward to is the actual game. The rest is routine.

"It's a fantastic job, but it's the games themselves that keep me going. It's all about playing, all about performing and being surrounded by people you respect and want to play with. As time goes on I enjoy playing more and more."

His injury, he says, was a burden on everyone. The time, the effort. Mischievously he adds that he was in rehab at 7am each morning, Brian O'Driscoll at 2pm. "He was constantly eating jumbo breakfast rolls while I was rehabbing," he jokes.

The jest won't go unnoticed by the Ireland captain. Hickie knows. It's the little things that keep you going.