The former Ireland and Lions Test star has had his misfortunes in recent seasons, but there's still one dream he can fulfil, he tells Gerry Thornley

Watch out world, there's going to be a new little Hendo in the autumn. Great news for Angie and Rob Henderson, although even a visit to their obstetrician in Cork on Wednesday had to be viewed in the context of tomorrow's potentially epic quarter-final with Biarritz.

"He had rubbed the jelly over Angie's belly and asked how she was, whereupon he turned to me: 'And Rob, how are you?' Then he pulled two tickets out of his breast pocket and said: 'Well, I've got my tickets anyway'."

Henderson laughs at the memory of it, citing it as an example of how it seems everyone buys into Munster when the Holy Grail looms into view again. "You could feel the buzz since the start of the week. It's inspiring for us as players and it also gives us a desire to pay them back, for the investment they make in supporting us."

Henderson disputes the notion that Munster have fallen some way short of their normally high standards in Europe this season, and also believes Biarritz's decision to move the game to San Sebastian is to Munster's advantage. "They're playing in Real Sociedad's ground, where they've never played before, so it's as much an away game for them as it is for us. The support we'll be taking will be equally as vocal, if slightly outnumbered."

On the face of it, Munster are not exactly ideally primed, whereas Henderson paints a picture of a singularly imposing Biarritz.

"They've beaten last year's champions, they've beaten Leicester home and away, they've recently beaten Toulouse and last Saturday they hammered Stade Francais," says Henderson, matter-of-factly. "They are a massively physically side, I think their average height is 6ft 2in, and Dimitri Yachvili is pulling all the strings at scrumhalf. They're a class side, with hardly a weakness." Yikes?

"But that's the beauty of cup football. It's a one-off, and we've been here so many times before. Experience counts, and this stage of the season seems to galvanise us. We know this is the business end, this is make or break. You have to put everything on the line. You can't leave anything in the video room or on the training ground."

Spain may be new territory, but when it comes to playing French sides abroad, to the knockout stages and to defying the odds, Munster have been here and bought the T-shirt. And Henderson gives a persuasive insight into why Munster carry an innate self-belief into this kind of match.

"We're the kind of team that rises to the challenge. We mightn't have played champagne rugby this season, but we can absorb pressure, keep making our tackles, and keep making our visits up the pitch count. Three points, three points, three points. We don't always have to play champagne rugby to win these types of matches.

"If you're prepared to grind it out, to dig your heels in, to say 'you're going to have to beat us, we're not going to give it to you', then you can force them into making mistakes instead of trying to force the pass, force the game. An ugly win is better than a pretty loss."

For the likes of Henderson, a frustrated bystander during the autumn Tests and the Six Nations, games like tomorrow's are, he says, "why we play rugby".

He hasn't had many chances to strut his stuff on the bigger stages this season. Henderson has started only two of Munster's five games in the two months since the final pool win over Harlequins in mid-January, and he confesses he didn't do himself any favours by playing with a virus in the defeat away to Cardiff.

He'd started off the season with ambitions of returning to the Irish team - he won the last of his 29 caps in the 61-3 World Cup warm-up win over Italy at Thomond Park in August of 2003 - and of making the Lions tour. To that end, he had even given up the cigarettes on January 3rd of last year.

"But for one reason or another things have gone over the crest of the hill for me. I still haven't given up on one day playing for Ireland again, but realistically Clive Woodward won't be taking me to New Zealand unless he's picking the squad on nostalgia. Then myself and Fergus Slattery should make it," he jokes, with typical self-deprecation.

Once he didn't get a look-in during the autumn Test window, his chances were pretty much scuppered. "Sometimes you get the rub of the green and sometimes you don't. There's a lot of factors that contribute to it - form, wanting to try out other combinations, other people's form. A lot of things didn't go my way. In a perfect world, I'd have had all my ducks in a row and have had an opportunity in the autumn internationals, but that wasn't to be, and from there it was always going to be very difficult to get back into things."

This time four years ago Henderson was enjoying his golden year, the season he scored hat-tricks of tries for his club, his country and the Lions. "I scored that hat-trick for Wasps when playing at outhalf, and I also played outhalf for Wasps in the European Cup against Stade Francais.

"I scored a hat-trick in the win over Italy in Rome, but, to be honest, I had a better all-round game in Paris alongside Brian (when O'Driscoll famously scored his hat-trick). I was flying that year, injury free, fit and enjoying my rugby."

He would ultimately renew his partnership with O'Driscoll in each of the three Lions Tests. "The stand-out memory is winning the first Test, but the whole experience was unforgettable. The players who go on this tour will remember it for the rest of their lives. You're rooming, training and playing with guys who you've almost been hating for the season. But the mixture it brings together makes it a very tight bond. That team will never play together again, but you'll always have the memories."

But as with so many players on that tour, the effort came with a price. Henderson played with injections to ease the pain in an injured knee in the second and third Tests, and a projected six-week recovery period from the resultant operation would ultimately last 16 weeks.

"The peer pressure is immense, because you don't want to be the runt of the litter, so everyone puts in a bigger effort, and also you don't know when or if it's going to come again. And if you make the Test team, that's when slight niggles or even larger injuries become secondary," says Henderson, declining to blame the heavy training load under Graham Henry.

He required operations for torn biceps sustained in the defeat to Gloucester at Kingsholm in October 2002 and, with cruel timing, against Leinster in September 2003 two days before the World Cup squad was announced. The scars prompted Angie to suggest that Henderson can tell his children he was the victim of a shark attack, quite a yarn given he can't swim.

Has he ever been the same player since that tour?

"Same player?" He pauses. "Probably not, because for the simple reason I haven't had a chance to put a long string of games together. At the start of the season things were beginning to turn around for me again, but it's been disjointed since Christmas with breaks, rest weeks and what have you. Have I ever been the same player? Probably not. Can I be? Yes."

Now 32, initially Henderson signed a three-year deal with Munster, which he has since extended by another two seasons, taking him up to the end of the 2005-6 campaign.

"If it all goes really well this season and next, I might look to have another year with Munster, but otherwise that will be it. Either way, Munster will be the last team I play for.

"I have a few business ventures in the pipeline and, don't laugh, I've started to do my coaching badges. It's something I'd like to get involved in, even if it just means helping out a junior club."

But, ideally, there's a few Ts to be crossed on his playing career yet, not least helping Munster to fulfil their magnificent obsession.

"Munster rugby is synonymous with the European Cup. We're the eternal bridesmaids, and the competition isgetting harder. I've no doubt that one day Munster will win this competition, but it would just be nice to be a part of it when that happens. A lot of good players who have played for Munster haven't won it, and this current crop would like to touch the trophy after coming so close, so many times."