Donncha O'Callaghan tells Gerry Thornley about his rugby pedigree and the responsibilities entailed in being part of Munster's engine room

It was quite a surprise to learn that Donncha O'Callaghan turned 25 in the week of the Scottish game. Coincidentally, it arrived on the Irish team's rest day, and he was grateful for that respite. Somehow though, it seemed to creep up quicker than most 25ths, and no-one was more taken aback than himself: "I got a shock myself, I was almost depressed on my birthday over it."

Ronan O'Gara, for one, hasn't helped.

"Rog has been rubbing it in non-stop, especially around the young fellas like Stephen Keogh. 'How old are you, Keogh, twenty-one? So Donncha is four years older than you?'. I've enough of it."

By today's standards, you'd expect to have seen more of such a natural.

O'Callaghan does have 11 caps to his name, but many have been bit parts, and his first test starts didn't come until the recent championship games against Wales and Italy. He's also had to bide his time at Munster, for in essence this is only his second full season as an established first-teamer.

"I knew it would take time and I'm the better for it. I've learnt an awful lot from it. I think maybe if I'd got things quicker I wouldn't have appreciated them and I probably wouldn't be playing the type of rugby I am now. I had to graft it out and I appreciate that."

Frustration could have manifested itself quite understandably in another way as well. A rival/compadre in the Munster second-row, Mick O'Driscoll, has already decamped to Perpignan and this week it was announced that Damien Browne, the 24-year-old Connacht lock, will move to Northampton.

"There were offers from other clubs, and I did think long and hard about them, especially when Gaillimh was captain for another year and I knew that coming into signing another contract," admits O'Callaghan.

"Declan (Kidney) and Niallo (O'Donovan) were very good with me at that time. They didn't fill my head or anything like that. They told me exactly how it was, and I was more than willing and patient to wait on."

Besides, in Munster, there's something else other than purse strings or the number on your back which keeps tugging at the soul. "It's different playing with Munster, it's about your friends and family and stuff like that, and that means an awful lot to me. I don't think I could throw on another jersey and give it everything I had to the same extent. Money wouldn't motivate me like that. It's probably something I was born into."

Destined for all of this, O'Callaghan served notice of an exceptional talent when breaking into the Irish Schools team seven years ago and he and Brian O'Driscoll are the only ones of the current Irish squad who featured in the under-19 World Cup win five years ago.

He took up the game at about six, his brother Ultan having led the way at Highfield. His dad, Hughie, passed away when Donncha, the second-youngest of four boys and a girl, was only six. Eddie, his eldest brother, Emmet, who plays a bit with Highfield, and Ultan became surrogate fathers to an extent, none more so than Ultan.

A notable Cork Con and Munster backrower in his own right, and also now the IRFU's development manager for Munster, Ultan's name peppers the conversation. As for the baby, Emer, he jokes, "she gets a raw deal altogether."

It's a very close-knit family; wherever Munster and Ireland take Donncha, the rest are sure to follow. "To be honest my best friends are my family. I appreciate everything my mum has done for me. It feels like you're giving something back. To be honest, I'd say we never made it easy for her." His father had actually been more into football, "a mad Liverpool head, only Emmet really took after him in playing football", but had introduced Eddie and Ultan to rugby at Highfield and sent them to a rugby-playing school, CBC Cork. With the help of coaches like Matt Foley and Garrett Fitzgerald, now CEO of the Munster Branch, CBC ended an eight-year streak, when Pres were pre-eminent, without a Munster Senior Schools Cup to their name, although O'Callaghan still has nightmares about the virtuoso Jeremy Staunton performance that nearly won the final for St Munchin's.

No less than Paul O'Connell, at 6' 6" and around 15 stone, he was clearly destined for great things, being the prototype for a big, modern-day, dynamic, ball-carrying lock forward. Nevertheless, with Mick Galwey's Indian summer and the signing of John Langford, not to mention the presence of O'Driscoll, O'Callaghan's career path is a salutary reminder of the worth of club rugby.

"Ultan had joined Con by then and was doing very well, so that was the natural call for me, and to be honest without the AIL and the structure that was there at the time, I don't think I would be playing the type of rugby I am playing now. I'm very grateful to Con for all they've done for me and my family."

It sounds, at face value, like a party political broadcast on behalf of the beleaguered club game, and Cork Con and the AIL in particular, but actually it is heartfelt and genuine. He cites the under-20 set-up, having "great coaches" like Packie Derham and Michael Bradley, and "small things" the Con people did for his mum, Marie, and his family.

There's unfinished business there after two losing AIL finals to Dungannon and Shannon. "It's gutting to lose AILs, because it feels like grassroots and in that way it hurts the most, especially when you've the likes of Marcus Horan, who won't shut up about it."

It irks him that he hasn't togged out for his club, for what he also calls his friends and his family, this season, but he'd still hope to.

A fairly, eh, mischievous character with a boundless energy, according to team-mates - O'Callaghan's humour is even more in your face than Galwey's. "There are no boundaries with Donncha. Nothing is sacred. Anything goes," says one, of the squad's foremost practical jokers.

It's the Munster way and, growing up, the O'Callaghan way. "You're always watching out to see who's out to get you or, more to the point, who did you get last and when's he going to strike back," says O'Callaghan. Even around the family house he was nicknamed Trickster, to which has since been added Dunners, Socky, Banjo and others.

But true to Munster type, all that natural ability has always been augmented by a hard, aggressive, sometimes abrasive edge to his game. He'd like to think the mists aren't so red these days, though he concedes that another yellow card last Friday doesn't help him lose the tag.

"I'd like to think I kind of play on the edge a bit and sometimes you're going to go over the wrong side of it, but I think if I ease up that just wouldn't be me. It's just not my form. I'd like to think I'd go for everything wholeheartedly." Cut from his brother's cloth to a large extent.

"I used to always look up to Ultan. Anything he did . . . He didn't drink, so I didn't. He watched what he ate, so I did. Just little things like that, and I still do."

As evidence, he waves the video tape in his hand, of the Stade Francais lineouts in action against Ulster and Leicester, as he'll be viewing it with Ultan later in the day.

Ultan was a late replacement the day his younger brother made his Munster debut against Edinburgh in August 1998, and Donncha packed down alongside Galwey the following week, but as long as Galwey and Langford were there, chances would come along sporadically. O'Callaghan was tried at blindside flanker as well, where two appearances in European Cup semi-finals postmarked his Munster career.

The first was three seasons ago, when an injury to Alan Quinlan saw him promoted to the starting line-up for his first competitive start of the season in the 16-15 defeat to Stade Francais in Lille: "It was just a nightmare for me. I underperformed, my head was all over the place going into it, and to be honest, I've learned more from Lille than I have from any other game."

A year later, in the semi-final against Castres in Beziers, O'Callaghan was sprung into action in the 16th minute as a replacement for the injured Anthony Foley.

"It was a chance for me to right the ghosts. I think the worst feeling I got was when I came into the dressing-room in Lille thinking I'd let the lads down."

Soon after coming on, Peter Clohessy was sin-binned, and so O'Callaghan was temporarily replaced. "I thought to myself 'this is it'. I didn't want to go back in there (the dressing-room) and have a look around and know that I could have given more. I was just so glad that I got the chance to do that, just to prove to the lads that I am a better player than I showed a year before."

His redemptory performance also showed he was ready to take over from Galwey in the Munster second row last season alongside his fellow tyro O'Connell. With a belated extended run in the Munster team came his Irish debut as a replacement in the win over Wales in the Millennium Stadium last year. Poignantly, it was the 18th anniversary of his father's death.

"It was very special and it was something in my mind. Normally it's a day when everyone is very down in my house and they were over in Wales watching my debut. We were lucky this year in that the anniversary was on the weekend of the Italian game. Rugby's great for stuff like that," says O'Callaghan, who talks appreciatively of everything the game has given his mother and his siblings, as much as himself.

Now, back with the extended Munster family, he doesn't have to bide his time anymore. It's about making the Munster jersey his own, and he's very mindful about replacing a legend in his own playing time.

"I want to really play with the same pride and passion Gaillimh played with when he wore that jersey, and hand it on to whoever takes it up next so that they give it their all."

That's the way it works in Munster. You inherit a legacy, and then you try to leave one behind you.