Rugby Challenge Cup: Keith Duggan talks to Bernard Jackman who, six years after accepting a contract with Connacht, feels ready for an Ireland call-up

January blanches the saucy richness from all seaside joints and Salthill is no exception. The promenade, scene of a thousand postcards is lonesome for people, the idle one-arm bandits in the amusement arcades blink and chirp and the cafes have a quiet, indolent feel. This is not the typical habitat for a rugby man but it is home to Bernard Jackman. He defends his parish, protesting the winter walks are more impressive in rough weather, that the sea air is great and the quietness is a blessing. It may not look like paradise but it is a sanctuary of sorts and one that is needed in a rugby season that is getting faster all the time.

This evening, Jackman and his Connacht buddies are in France for the second time in a week. It was hardly worth coming home. Last week in Pau was an adventure.

Sometimes Connacht trips have a let's-climb-the-Andes-for-the-crack feel about them. They left Galway for Pau on Thursday, bused it to Dublin and then flew into Toulouse. Some of the boys were reading Johnson (Martin, not Samuel) and in his autobiography he described Pau as the most intimidating rugby place in the world. The England enforcer recalled spectators leaving their seats to come down to the field to hurl spits at him. Only the French would be mad enough to do that to Johnson.

A two-and-a-half hour bus drive from Toulouse delivered them to Johnson's version of hell and the weather was freakishly unsettled, with sudden rain storms and violent, unpredictable winds. Not that the Galway-based team, whose home pitch at the Sportsground offers as much protection from the weather as an oil rig, could complain. Still, it was a pleasant town, and as has been their wont under coach Michael Bradley, the Connacht boys stuck together as they strolled around.

"I suppose people recognised a bunch of over-sized Paddies roaming around and put two and two together but it was fine," says Jackman on Wednesday lunchtime, an hour of reprieve from a gruelling double session.

"The thing was, when we ran out onto the pitch for the game, the weather was frightening and these aluminium signs were flying through the air, they could have garrotted somebody. So the crowds had to go way back under the roof of the stands and there was no spitting as Johnno had promised. We weren't too disappointed, though."

What did annoy them was the result. Although the 10-6 loss gave them a handsome aggregate victory overall, the win was attainable for Connacht. The next day they were still smarting as they made their exit from southern France, a departure delayed significantly when a message was dispatched from a phantom group of skiers whose bus had been caught in an avalanche. Could the plane wait until they, ehh, dug themselves free? So the Connacht boys waited and waited.

It was close on midnight when they were back in Galway, by which time they had learned a trip to Narbonne was on the cards this weekend instead of an easier and juicier tie against London Irish. But who is complaining? Certainly not Jackman. It has been generally acknowledged the Connacht hooker is playing out of his skin this season. Although circumspect about the quality of his form, he admits he has thrived in the general atmosphere that rookie coach Bradley has established in Galway. Getting here has been a circuitous route and Jackman's story has a hobo element to it.

He was reared outside the gilded aristocracy that rules rugby in the Pale, growing up as a cattle dealer's son on the Wicklow/Carlow border. Cartographers would place the family home in Wicklow but the local postmaster says Carlow.

He actually heard of Shane Byrne by reputation of his Leinster schoolboy status when he was growing up but the first time Jackman laid eyes on a rugby ball was when he went to board in Newbridge College.

"We played everything but it was rugby, rugby, rugby all the time. Even tip rugby after study. Like, without it the place would have been a bit grim and it probably saved me from the bit of bullying that goes on.

"But funny, I was back there a few months ago to do a bit of coaching and it was strange. The boarding school is closed now because there wasn't enough Dominican priests to keep it going. The one thing that used to be, there was always life there all evening. This time it was a ghost town by

5 p.m. I think that is bound to have an adverse affect on players coming through."

Geordan Murphy was a year behind Jackman in school and he also played with the older brothers of John O'Sullivan, Connacht's exciting number eight. Although not one of the fashionable schools, they performed respectably in the Leinster Senior Cup, losing a quarter-final to the Glongowes team of Richard Governey's time, 25-20. That ethos of solemn glory that enshrines the school's competition opened his eyes.

"It was kind of a culture shock all right. I mean, the idea that you could train for five years to make a senior team that could be gone after one game. It was incredibly over-hyped. But you would still be envious watching the big teams on St Patrick's Day."

After school, Jackman decided to pursue a career in marketing and Japanese in college and to chase down a bit of rugby. He was happy-go-lucky, signing with Lansdowne and then Clontarf. This was the last roar of amateurism and he is glad he experienced the comparatively bacchanalian times of training on Tuesday and Thursday and pints after the game on Sunday.

"It was great fun. The club knew we were skint students and they would throw a few pints your way. That was a completely different era, it seems like a different lifetime but I am glad I caught the end of it before it went professional."

Jackman was still a new kid on the block when professionalism was announced. In retrospect, those early days were almost pretend-professionalism. It was Warren Gatland who gave Jackman his break. Connacht had six full-time contracts, and 15 part-time. One of these was fluttered at Jackman. Immersed in the nuances of learning Japanese, he tried to balance all the books for a while, thrice driving across Connacht for training and games and making it back to class the next day.

"The schedule was much lighter back then, with just six European Conference games and the interprovincials. But in reality, I was living nowhere."

It was impossible. Japanese is a language with about 5,000 different characters, some unknown even to native speakers. Basically, it is writing through pictures. Reared on the verbal chicanery of Carlow cattle markets meant that for Jackman listening to Japanese was relatively straightforward. Writing it was an agonising process but he was getting there. A bright life in Tokyo beckoned some day when the rugby was done. At least that was the theory.

Gatland listened to all this and then raised those doleful Kiwi eyebrows as if to say, "Bernard, san. I'm making you an offer you can't refuse." And that was it. He switched to a business course and actively sought out his role in big-time professional rugby.

And now, six years later, perhaps he is on the threshold.

He has certainly put in the time. At Connacht, he had to make do with slivers of chances because the number-two jersey still belonged to Billy Mulcahy, a Connacht cult hero enjoying the last gust of a full-hearted career. Glen Ross arrived as coach and then took Jackman with him to Sale. Life was good in the suburbs of Manchester but when Brian Kennedy, the millionaire owner of the club splashed out on an international front five, Jackman decided to leave. He ignored a flattering and handsome three-year extension to a contract that could not guarantee first-team football and gave his old club Clontarf a call.

"It was a gamble but one I was prepared to take. At the back of my mind, I always had ambitions to play for Ireland. But it was complete lockdown in the provinces, there was no contracts going. So I decided I would comeback and play All-Ireland league and see how that went. If I stayed with Sale, I would have been fine in terms of a job but my rugby would not have improved."

Back in Dublin, playing in the humbler borough of Irish rugby forced him to deal with realities that the sport had always distanced him from. Like work. He got a job as a representative with a medical company visiting doctors surgeries all over north Leinster. In the evening, he trained with the professional dispassion that the years at Sale had thought him.

Clontarf got promoted and Jackman caught the eye. But it was that of an old flame. Connacht, reputedly on the verge of extinction, had someone get on the phone early. "It was really difficult because we had a good chat but they didn't know what the story was going to be this season, they couldn't even predict who might be coaching. So I asked if I could wait until that was sorted. Then I heard Brads had been appointed and just hours later it seemed he was on the phone. And he was very impressive, he knew a lot about me and I instinctively felt it was going to be a good set-up down there."

The rest is history. Jackman's performances with Connacht in late autumn and winter earned him a place on the Irish training camp in Lanzarote over Christmas. Most of the marque guys he knew from over the years and the management were terrific. If anything the week of sharp running and drills energised him and when Munster met Connacht under a gale in Athlone on January 2nd, he was in thunderous form, the most on-song player on the pitch. Coincidentally, Ireland coach Eddie O'Sullivan was among the 4,000 citizens freezing in the shadows.

Jackman has been called for Irish duty before, travelling on the 1998 tour of South Africa and making the Six Nations squad the following season. But his appearances have been limited to A-standard and really, he was just a youngster on the edge then, groomed for future days. Now he feels and truly believes he is ready to graduate.

"I mean, yeah, it has always been my goal to play Six Nations. I would love to. I feel I have waited long enough. But that doesn't mean I have a right to. The 30-man squad is announced at the end of January and to be included on that is my immediate hope."

In the meantime, all he can do is concentrate on the business at hand. Somewhere at home lies a European Challenge Cup medal he won with Sale. A Connacht equivalent would matter more. It hasn't felt as if he is playing for a club under threat. For some reason the environment is as smooth as he has known. Bradley's rotation policy has been hailed as one of the wonders of the Irish season and Jackman confirms that it creates a rare dressing-room dynamic.

"Because by Christmas on most teams, the first team is established. And that creates a splinter group, guys moan and get negative. It's like any job - if one guy gets all the commissions, the rest are saying, how come he always gets the leads. Here, if you aren't playing one week, you know your opportunity will come round again. That old dreaded feeling of one bad game and you get the bullet for the season doesn't exist. That creates a pretty good feeling."

It is one they will carry onto the field in Narbonne tonight. The teams have met over the past two seasons and on aggregate, there is a point between them. Jackman is still learning about his immediate opponents but chances are they are aware of him.

In typical games for Connacht, he has been the one leading the charge, the pale and ginger complexion, soft-faced and iron-boned, the quintessential Celt. Or he has been the one busy putting up a personal tackle count, the defender that keeps cropping up all across the green and black line. Stonewall Jackman. For the first time, they are beginning to talk about him on the airwaves as a true contender. He has heard it but tries not to listen. It is easier just to bury his head in the scrum and keep working, keep chipping away, keep doing the small things right and keep on hoping.

Funny, over the New Year, in Dublin, he bumped into a girl that was with him on the Japanese course all those years ago. She greeted him in the language just for a laugh but it got lost in translation and he realised that he had forgotten it all. Some things just aren't meant to be.

But hey, screw Tokyo. There is, as the saying goes, always Paris. And if you see Jackman there on February 14th, green sleeves rolled, you will know he has arrived.