SIX NATIONS:NOW NEARER the end of his glittering, multi-decorated and hugely-prolific career than the beginning, Ronan O'Gara is not of a mind to set his or Ireland's targets too low. He looks around his own squad, looks at their counterparts, and deduces that even with treks to London and Paris, a Grand Slam is achievable.

“I think it is. There’s a fair bit of uncertainty in teams and you don’t know what teams will show up and how they’ll show up. Deccie (Kidney) has been stressing to us that ‘the only that will hold you back will be your attitude and your ambition going into this competition’. So I think that’s a good way of putting it. I think if you come really tuned in and everyone wanting to win it then you have a good chance. But if you kind of just show up and you’re happy to play for Ireland, then you could be in trouble.”

Blissfully so in this day and age of carefully chosen words, while the articulate O’Gara may choose his after due consideration, he is not shy about expressing his true feelings. The onset of another Six Nations also finds O’Gara in good shape physically and more at ease with himself mentally after both the World Cup and Munster’s Heineken Cup campaign.

“Essentially I’d lost my place and I was doing everything possible to demonstrate that I had something to offer this team. That’s what matters.

“That my team knows that ‘Rog can still do the business for us, whether he’s starting or coming off the bench’. It was important for me to lay down a marker at the World Cup and that’s the ultimate so I think that gave me confidence.

“I realise exactly where I am at the minute, 34 going on 35. There’s a good number 10 there, there’s two good number 10s there. So let’s have a crack off this, let’s see who gets picked. If I have value to start the game, or come on in the game, that is hugely important to me.”

The number 10 selection is out of his control, but so be it. “Contrary to what certain people think that I’m difficult if I’m left out of the starting team, that’s not true. I would like to think that if my team-mates came in here I’d be seen as the ultimate team man in terms of how I conduct myself, that is so important, that you have their respect, irrespective of what the public think. What is important is the value you create for your team, the presence you carry in the squad.

“I think that is so much more sometimes than playing ability because people who don’t take the field don’t understand essentially what is involved, you have so many mind games going on, so many games within games going on. I’ve seen plenty of good players who when the going gets tough, they walk. So you’ve got to have that ability to hang in for each other, stick up for each other and fight for every single point.”

Now switched into “Irish mode”, he’s content to park the thought of a Munster-Ulster quarter-final, though he maintains Munster have neither been as bad as some people had made out before the rout of Northampton nor as good as some people were now making them out to be.

As for perceptions of his own performance last Saturday, he said: “I looked good because our outer backs talked. My game is dependent on (Lifeimi) Mafi getting information from outside to in. I’ll boss the nine and the forwards but it makes me look good when 12 and 13 are chatting at me all the time.

“When Dougie (Howlett) played, he was the best communicator I ever played with. He’s another person who thinks like I do and when you’ve two people like that it makes your job a whole lot easier.”

Another in that category is Brian O’Driscoll, and a tad ominously, if understandably, O’Gara revealed that the great man’s “hugely strange” absence is already felt. “Even the first day at training today I was kind of looking to see where he was because it was a little bit mixed the session. Usually when he’s there the standards are really high but I suppose because Brian is the captain Paul (O’Connell) goes with the forwards and he doesn’t really see the backs and when he isn’t there somebody is going to have to take that role of the leader in the backs.

“It’s an area we need to make sure standards are really high because I think it’s only when you take him out you realise how much of a presence he is and he’s a class operator, so of course he’ll be missed.”