European Cup:  Johnny Wattersontalks to Leinster flanker Keith Gleeson about being part Aussie, part Irish, and his long battle back from injury to peak form

His right forearm is a fascination for children. The scar runs along the top as though a cartographer has sketched in a miniature mountain range. His ankle is concealed by trousers, but there too is evidence of surgeon Bill Quinlan's masterful piece of construction. For Keith Gleeson, the surgery reminds him of who he is and what rugby has asked of him and what rugby has given him.

Over the past 10 years the game has offered plenty, and in the last two it has looked for things back. That is the way Gleeson has always known it. You work hard and you get rewarded. You get knocked down and you get up. He has laboured, fretted about his mortality and finally, now with his game in pristine condition, he is again performing.

Stubborn is a word he keeps repeating. Stubborn is how he describes himself, not in a negative sense, but as a helpful trait to have in the world of professional rugby, another piece of armoury. The flanker is a composite of parts, part Irish, part Aussie. Where one ends and the other begins, he doesn't know himself. But, at 30 years, it is the Australian that defines him more. He is the confident pack member, outspoken and competitive.

When he arrived in Leinster on Matt Williams' watch, that can-do mindset and outspoken streak was occasionally identified as arrogance. To Gleeson, he was only speaking his mind like any Aussie does.

Voicing opinions was never really an Irish trait, and the poor mouth, the underdog tag, didn't sit comfortably with him. Gleeson's arrival in Dublin was not to slip quietly into line. Instead, he kicked down the door. Immediately, players recognised that as well as a top-class backrow, here was a strong character with clear lines of vision about the game.

Soon enough, the cheap-shot squad plotted against him. Gleeson became the player whose first book would be Famous People Who Know Me.

"I didn't necessarily appreciate the comment. When I first came back to Ireland, I was probably a bit more outspoken than I should have been," he says. "Certainly in and around Leinster I desperately wanted to be part of something. I desperately wanted to be part of a team that was successful.

"In theory, I should have kept my mouth shut for the first year. I was 25, a young guy. I wouldn't have said anything I regretted, but you have to earn a level of respect in any team to be able to really speak. If I had it again, I'd have been a little bit quieter at times. It obviously did lead to an opinion whereby I'd be seen as a very outspoken person."

In reality, Gleeson got off with a rap on the knuckles. The team wags had turned hooker Shane Byrne into the dad who put double glazing in his house so that his kids couldn't hear the ice-cream van.

Five years on, the perspective has not so much softened the edges but injected more diplomacy. The demands he makes on himself have not diminished. Last summer's matches against New Zealand and Australia marked a reunion of Gleeson and Ireland. To make that work, he had to bridge a two-year gap during which he fleetingly considered bringing a close to a career that had, to that point, earned him 23 Irish caps.

When he broke his leg in August 2004, he knew it would be at least six months before he again stepped on to a pitch with intent. In March the following year that's what he did. But for over six months his ankle wouldn't do what he wanted, what it had done before.

The bread and butter of an openside flanker is to cross ground and make tackles. Gleeson found that while the leg had mended, he just didn't have the movement to allow him to work efficiently around the park.

"When I broke my leg I didn't understand the injury. The down side was that I lost a huge amount of flexibility in my ankle. The first six months back on the pitch and I couldn't move. If I had to shuffle right to make a tackle, my foot literally wouldn't turn out to do what I wanted to do. I'd to crab across the pitch. That was the scariest part. I couldn't do what I wanted.

"One month turned to three and three turned to six. I was seriously beginning to doubt if I was ever going to play again properly, or whether I might have to call time on my career."

The difficulty was not so much that his rugby journey would end here as a car wreck, but that he felt he had a lot more to offer. A 20-year-old would have had anxiety attacks about where his next cap was going to come from, but the 30-year-old took a more short-term view.

Gleeson began to reconstruct his game and to blindly believe it would come back. The tackling, the running, the vision, the awareness, they were all there, but in varying degrees of disarray. His ball-carrying gained a healthy vitality while his defence looked poorly.

Then one day, against Edinburgh, his ankle started to behave again. There was more reconstruction to be done. But patience as much as bloody-mindedness and work ethic was prescribed.

"Where do I come from?," he says, sprawling his heavily muscled torso back in the chair. "Probably the biggest thing that happened in my life is that I lost a younger brother (Niall). When I was 12 and he was eight, he was killed in a bike accident. Fortunately I'd two loving parents who helped myself and my brother to get over it. You learn a lot from that.

"As a young kid that is one of the toughest things you can face. If you can get over that, I've always believed you can get over anything. I guess that's where I come from.

"I'm not the biggest. I'm not the strongest. I'm not the quickest on a rugby pitch. But I'm determined and I'm stubborn and I like to think I was given a talent . . . lots of people in this world were given a talent, but you have to go out there and work hard and make that talent happen.

"You are a sum of what happens to you in life. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I've seen the ups and downs, the reality of life, and you learn that if you want things in life you've got to work for them. No one gives you anything. Certainly you'll be offered chances and get help, but if you really want something you've got to go and get it yourself. That's the philosophy I've grown up with.

"I've worked darn hard at rugby my whole career, and possibly that is why I've been around as long as I have. From the age of 20 I have never had to ask anything financially of my parents, which I'm proud of. I guess, at the end of the day, I'm just happy with who I am."

Gleeson is the guy you want on your side. The upbeat optimism, the luminous force field of energy that surrounds him can be contagious and he's too much the professional not to consider his position when Eddie O'Sullivan announces his Irish squad this week. There are more seasons behind him than ahead, but the fierce competitor desperately wants inclusion. That burns brightly for all to see and his drive, as always, has been to go to try to get it.

He has earned the right over the last three months to expect again, and maybe now, with the Six Nations Championship on the horizon and a World Cup year, it is time for the game to give back to the player.

Keith Gleeson

Club:St Mary's College RFC

Province:Leinster

School:St Aloysius College, Sydney

Date of Birth:June 17th, 1976

Height:6ft 1in (185cm)

Weight:15st 6lb (98kg)

Official Leinster Caps:88

Ireland Caps:25 (February 2002- )

Ireland Points:25 (five tries)