Johnny Wattersonfinds the number nine keeping a respectful but detached distance from talk of his opponents today, especially his opposite number

THE REAL Tomás O’Leary lies somewhere between the man sitting straight-backed in his chair and the occasionally growling, self-critical scrumhalf you regularly find after a biting international match. Earlier this week in the team hotel in Dublin O’Leary calmly acknowledged he didn’t know the name of his opposite number, the Italian scrumhalf. He had seen him play, watched the videos but couldn’t remember his name.

Far from strutting arrogance the All-Ireland winning minor hurler was holding a deliberately detached and respectful distance from the opposition in the style of a prize fighter, who faces the brawl by replaying his own strengths in his head and not those of his opponent. The Italian player in the blue corner is Tito Tebaldi. How he plays, if he steps before passing, if he box kicks everything, or, if he line breaks seem more important. The details of his name can wait.

“He seems like a good, decent player but we’re not concentrating on individual players,” says O’Leary, trying his best to sidestep the possibility of damning with faint praise.

O’Leary’s bent, stylistically, is Munster and his experience of stitching the heaving forwards to the running back men in scrappy inch-by-inch Heineken Cup matches has taught him, if anything, the difference between giving good interview and hammering out yards against a belligerent Italian side that conceded 170 points in five defeats during the 2009 championship.

He survives the crumple zone in the cross hairs of flankers and beneath the shadows of the secondrows and props, often having to dip into a bigger world where he doesn’t belong. He has reason to tread cautiously.

But O’Leary’s robust style of shrugging off tackles or stopping larger units invading Irish territory is one reason Declan Kidney has picked him ahead of the more seasoned operators he has in constant readiness. O’Leary fits Jack Charlton’s hoary old notion that a big good ’un is better than a little good ’un.

Peter Stringer (91 caps), Eoin Reddan (17 caps) and Isaac Boss (12 caps) might bring more cloth to the international party but O’Leary, with 11 appearances, is unequivocally more physical, more there. The least experienced scrumhalf has been handed the shirt. You can also understand why he is judicious with his comments with all that snapping around his heels.

“You can never be content and rest on your laurels,” he says. “Obviously, I’m happy to get the start and it’s up to me to give a decent performance which keeps me in the team. There’s major competition at scrumhalf in Ireland and I’ve said it before, it drives me on to improve my own game and to stay at the top and get better. I’m constantly trying to get better and improve my performances. Hopefully, I can play well enough to make sure I’m starting the week after.

“This will be the last Six Nations played at Croke Park so I’m going to enjoy every minute of playing there. With the tradition of it and my GAA background, it’s special.”

O’Leary’s personal triumph is he has seamlessly continued where he left off prior to seriously injuring his ankle last May, which jolted his career to a halt and kept him out of the Lions tour to South Africa. An opportunity missed and months of grafting back to fitness was rewarded before Christmas with outings against Australia, Fiji and South Africa.

O’Leary has never been afraid of challenging himself and in his earlier years the less charitable used to say his passes from the base of the scrums and rucks used to arrive to the receiver with a “Get Well Soon” card.

But Kidney, when he was coaching the Munster side, had faith in the player. He saw that if that one aspect of O’Leary’s game could be improved then the natural athlete and the qualities that earned him the Cork captaincy on All-Ireland final day would prove the making of a valuable asset. O’Leary set to work and with the help of Dolphin’s former Ireland scrumhalf Dave O’Mahony and Garryowen’s Greg Oliver, a former Scotland scrumhalf, took his career on to an entirely different footing.

Stringer was the immovable object at the beginning but in latter years O’Leary has proven there are more aspects to his play.

The vastly improved pass, the physical presence, especially in defence, and his speed still there from the days of blowing his fingers out on the wing, at this stage gives Kidney greater all round bang for his buck.

But this week’s match has a different complexion. Italy have never beaten Ireland in the championship and that lowly status ensures that a different rule to the one used against the Spingboks will be used to measure success. Italy are striving to avoid a hat-trick of wooden spoons. There is an entirely different dynamic, although two years ago just one score separated the sides, 16-11.

“I played against Italy last season and the game was very tight in the first half,” says O’Leary. “They are very physical in attack and in defence. They did very well against New Zealand in the autumn. Their best players play in France, so how their provincial teams perform in the Heineken Cup doesn’t reflect their strength.

“I suppose there is a lot of expectation on us to win and that makes it more difficult in itself but we just have to try to concentrate on the processes of the game and the basics of the game. Italy are a strong, physical side. We just have to make sure we do the basics well and compete with them physically, especially for the first 40 minutes, and not let them get into the game, try and do what we do as well as we can and hopefully we’ll take it from there in the second half.”

Defending a Grand Slam is also a new team experience. But these are thrusting times.

“We know how difficult that is,” says the 26-year-old. “But it’s not something we’ve spoken of as a group or anything, maybe different fellas are thinking of it. We know how difficult it is to win one. It hasn’t entered our thought process. Last year we took it game by game. I know it’s a cliche but that’s what we did. Hopefully if we can do that this year we’ll have more success again.”

By now O’Leary will know it is Tebaldi at the far side of the scrum in blue. But that information, you feel, won’t altogether change his thinking.