Toulouse v Leinster: Gerry Thornley talks to Leinster's Keith Gleeson, who has recovered from serious injury and is back to his best ahead of what he terms his Test match against Toulouse

He'll be 30 in June, he has been usurped by first Johnny O'Connor, now David Wallace's star is in the ascendancy, and the younger Shane Jennings is cutting a swathe with Leicester and Ireland A. "Are you trying to make me cry here?" interrupts Keith Gleeson with a smile.

Yet you know you can put this scenario too him because you'd be pretty certain he's weighed it up himself, without in any way dimming his desire or self-belief.

And you're not disappointed.

Gleeson broke his arm in the last of his 23 Tests against Italy two seasons ago, missing out on the first of Ireland's Triple Crown the following week. Cruelly, he sustained a broken fibula and tibula in training at the start of the following season. Yet the fire in Keith Gleeson burns as strongly as ever.

"Look I'll be honest, the last few years have been very frustrating. Breaking my arm and missing the Triple Crown game was a kick, but you get over that. I always knew injuries interrupt every player's career at some stage or other. The break in the leg was the most frustrating. It was a stupid thing that happened on the training ground, just unlucky, and it was the nature of the break and how serious it was that whacked me off the park, and that's taken time."

Dr Bill Quinlan, who has put him back together again twice, always warned him it would take time, but that he would get back. Even though he was back playing by March, he knew he wasn't his old self and he knew he had a lot of ground to catch up.

With Ireland coach Eddie O'Sullivan's good wishes, again dispelling the rumour they had a falling out, he missed the Japanese tour and had a good pre-season.

"But I still had a lot of issues. I still had a lack of flexibility around my ankle. The body wouldn't do what the mind wanted it to do. The ankle just didn't move the way I wanted it."

There would be unexpected, and quite drastic improvement in his range of movement. "The game against the Borders in the week before the November internationals it was moving well, and in the game itself I knew I had the range again. The body would start doing what the mind wanted it to do and ever since it's been great."

Certain things he feels he's doing better. He's more active with the ball in hand, his support lines are better, but only by the end of January did he feel he had his defensive game back together, in the main through regaining much of his old agility.

Unfortunately, like the majority of his team-mates, the momentum has been interrupted. Still the thought of today's game and the beginning of a two-month period of intensive rugby excites him. From November onwards he reckons he hasn't enjoyed a season so much, in the main because he's never had to recover from such a low base.

"I was facing the stage where my contract was up at the end of the season, and I had to find out whether I could play professional rugby or was I finished," he admits candidly. "Suddenly when I got back to that stage where I could, that took away a huge amount of stress. Whilst I've always believed I could handle stress and pressure well, not knowing whether you can do something you love doing is very frustrating. Now, I have to say I've really, really enjoyed the last six months of playing. I almost feel like a 21-year-old, and I'm accused of taking my happy pills before training."

He still has his mountains to rescale, as he puts it, such as winning the Celtic League and the Heineken European Cup. Obliged to adopt a watching brief during the Six Nations, playing Toulouse is, he admits, his Test match.

"The world is watching. You're performing on the big stage, against some of the best in the world and with some of the best in the world, and you want to be able to walk off that pitch with your head held high and say 'yeah, I'm good enough.' "

Although he has signed a two-year extension with Leinster his mother is none too impressed. "Just going overseas for a year or two mum," he told her; five years ago.

Initially, he was trying merely to prove to himself that he could play at least at provincial level. He did that and more.

The story is well known by this juncture, about how his Irish father, Tony, and Australian mum, Diane, emigrated to Sydney when he was seven. About how he progressed through the ranks with St Aloysius College, his club Northern Suburbs, the Australian Under-21s, New South Wales and the Waratahs, but ultimately suffered frustration there and refocused his ambitions to the land of his birth if not his upbringing.

"That first year was great. I made it to where I wanted to be. I was enjoying the rugby and enjoying the set-up. It was a lot easier coming here with family and friends, rather than the south of France or somewhere like that. So it's been great. Obviously a bit of a rollercoaster at times."

His grandfather and uncle live here, as well as a host of cousins."I love Ireland. Look, Ireland is very like Australia. The only difference," he continues, and you know what's coming next even before he looks out the window, "is the weather. The people are very much the same; hard-working, know-how-to-enjoy-life people. It's a great culture. So no regrets. I'm even marrying an Irish girl at the end of June."

He met Fiona Walsh through Victor Costello on his first Christmas Eve here, and they began going out with each other a few months later.

That first year saw Leinster win 15 out of 15, with Gleeson's arrival as an authentic openside providing an integral added link, in every sense, before running into a vintage Toulouse in the concluding European Cup pool game. That sent them to Leicester for the quarter-finals, but subsequent failures in the knock-out stages have given Leinster baggage at this stage of the season, not least the semi-final implosion to Perpignan at Lansdowne Road three seasons ago.

He readily acknowledges this.

"There are no words to describe it. That was one of those 'what ifs?' and 'if onlys' and at the end of your career you want to have more good times, great victories and great memories as opposed to the 'what ifs?' or 'if onlys'. That was a real clanger and just sits there and eats at us."

"Coming to the end of April we knocked lumps out of each other every day, right up to the day before the game and even the warm-up. Then when things started to go wrong there was probably a lack of direction from enough senior players."

The baggage didn't end there, and like most of his team-mates Gleeson has seen four coaches in four seasons. The Gary Ella year was largely wasted, with Leinster not even making the knock-out stages. Gleeson admits there was a them-and-us divide, largely along the lines of returning internationals and non-internationals.

"Professional sport is a brutal business and this is one of the pitfalls of having four coaches in four years, because it takes any coach at least a year to shape his own squad."

Recalled to the starting line-up against Leicester in last season's quarter-final, Gleeson also concedes "with the benefit of hindsight" he wasn't ready for that game.

Gleeson and Leinster aren't ideally primed today either, but they're both a good deal more prepared than they were this time a year ago, in the main thanks to the new regime.

Michael Cheika has revived old strengths as well as providing a new vision. The new coach, contrary to his public image, can rant and rave, and rip shreds off the players in training, but it's designed to put the kind of pressure on players they will experience on match days.

"The one thing I've enjoyed this year with Cheika and Knox and Brewer is how we've played the game. If you use the ball smartly you're going to challenge defences. If you're just going to run into guys the best defences and the worst defences will close you down. This year it's all been about decision-making on the run. It means mistakes are being made at times, but (we're) putting the opposition under a lot of pressure as well.

"But we've a lot of plays designed to get us over the gain line and keeping the ball off the ground, as opposed to the last two years we probably didn't work well enough on the skills and continuity side of the game. Using our heads on the pitch as opposed to just physically trying to run over teams."

As Gleeson asserts, in the light of Brian O'Driscoll, Malcolm O'Kelly and others signing new contracts, "if Leinster hadn't got the right coaching panel this year, I don't think there would have been too many senior players who would have re-signed. Simple as that. And you have to say hats off to Cheika and Knox for getting that belief back into the squad."

At the end of a typically candid, erudite and lengthy chat, you can't help but feel that Gleeson is more mellow, less intense than the wronged 25-year-old on a mission almost five years ago. You wonder if he now concedes his outspoken, opinionated, self-assured and single-minded ways perhaps rubbed up people, even team-mates, the wrong way. He smiles ruefully and recounts reading Thomas Castaignede this season when he was recalled to the French squad, and admitted that when he first broke through he would have demanded to play in certain positions. "Now I'll play wherever the hell they tell me," wrote the Frenchman. It seems to strike a cord.

"You mellow, mature, you learn to enjoy and take things better. It's funny, I don't think Cheika would have worked in Leinster four years ago.

"I don't think the Leinster players would have been ready for him blowing a storm and putting them under pressure to perform. Now they're in a much better position to handle that."

He looks at Jamie Heaslip's relatively relaxed demeanour and regards it as a great attitude to have, if one that might have been alien to him at such a young age. "I've done damn well to come back from where I was so I'm going to enjoy every time I get out there. Yes I want to perform, and there's always the fear of letting team-mates down, or letting myself down, but I'm not going to get all twisted up inside worrying about issues outside my control.

"I'm going to enjoy it, because as I've learnt once before sometimes it can be taken away from you quite quickly."