Johnny Wattersonon how a dyed-in-the-wool Munster man has learned to breathe more freely in the Leinster set-up

It is probably fair to say Munster don't like it when a club comes in and snatches a player from under their nose. Even less so when it is Leinster doing the poaching.

But tap the memory banks of Trevor Hogan and what you get is the Red Army, Nenagh and Thomond Park. Cut the Leinster secondrow in two and after The Fields of Athenry emerge, the childhood snapshots are of a kid in a red jersey. That's how lucky Leinster have been with Hogan when they offered him a chance to hold his place along side Malcolm O'Kelly on a Dublin field instead of warming a Limerick bench.

Ireland coach Eddie O'Sullivan obviously thinks so and when Hogan was drafted into the Six Nations squad, the Leinster lock leaped over Leo Cullen, Bob Casey and Matt McCullough in the international pecking order. Twice capped on the 2005 Irish tour to Japan, Hogan, although still on a learning curve under the tutelage of O'Kelly, is now being measured against his Leinster partner, and Donncha O'Callaghan and Paul O'Connell.

But the move north to Munster's enemy neighbours, traumatic as it was, had to be made.

"Yeh, it was huge," admits Hogan. "It was obviously tough to leave Munster. But with the quality that was there, it was very hard to get regular games. That's not to say there isn't great quality in the secondrow up here but I've been lucky enough to get regular games. Heineken Cup is the main tournament to list your improvements. It's a step up and if you can make a few carries and live with the intensity of it, then you are just going to improve. Playing against those players and with those all around me has helped me no end.

"Now playing with Malcolm O'Kelly is just brilliant. Coming from Paul O'Connell, he's a completely different type of player. Just sitting down with him analysing opposition is so valuable for me, seeing how he operates. He's also so fit and so fast and that little pop inside for me last week . . . I was just lucky enough to be inside him. If I wasn't playing alongside Malcolm I don't think I would have made the improvements I have been making."

The secondrow was not always his calling and when Hogan finished a two-year stint with Trinity and moved to Blackrock College to play Division One of the All-Ireland League, then coach Kevin West had him playing at blindside flanker. There is a certain irony here too as the players who virtually owned both secondrow places then were Stradbrook stalwarts Cullen and Casey.

"I was playing six at Blackrock and Kevin West was influential in that. For me a lot of it was to do with size. I was a lot lighter back then. That was the way my metabolism was. I needed to put on a lot of weight in order to play in the secondrow, which does need size and weight for scrummaging.

"So I was glad to move into the secondrow and try to become known as a secondrow rather than a utility player. Also Blackrock had a lot of good secondrows there at the time. Cullen and Casey were there, so I was glad to play anywhere.

"Then at Munster the amount of backrows there was just unbelievable. There was Stephen Keogh, John O'Sullivan and all the other lads. There was no need for me. I was just happy to be seen as a secondrow then."

At 27, Hogan has been something a slow burner and although his activity in Munster would have generated some heat, O'Callaghan and O'Connell, the first-choice occupants of shirts four and five, would have cast a long shadow. In blue, he is now able to breathe more freely and last match out, his increased ball carrying and try would have shaped a successful night.

"You don't really get too carried away looking at your stats like that," he says of the ball-in-hand work. "The missed tackles would be the line you'd be looking at. I don't really worry about the stats too much but definitely I got my hands on the ball a bit more and yeh, it was enjoyable."

So far at least, it has been a happy marriage.