Warren Gatland's first forays into Irish rugby haven't always been the most promising. He describes his first training session with Galwegians in 1989; how "the skill levels were shocking, everybody ran across the pitch barely a metre apart and they couldn't even play a proper game of tip rugby."

He returned to his rented bedroom and asked himself "what the **** am I doing here?"

For the first match, a league tie away to Sligo in November 1989, things didn't get much better. Gatland again describes the disciplined rugby structure he came from, how an 11.00 a.m. departure for an away game means just that. "The deal was that we left Galwegians at 11.00 that morning.

"I was driving along at about 10.50 when I saw three players walking along who were at least 15 minutes walk away. So I stopped and threw the gear in and picked them up and we got there at a few minutes to 11.00. There was myself, the three of them and two other players at 11.00.

"At about 11.15, a few more players arrived and about 11.20, we had 14 players. So I said, `that's it, we're going' and we left one of the players behind locked in the jacks and he was looking through the letter box watching the bus leave."

A few more tardy stragglers arrived, released the toilet-bound one and drove separately. Gatland chuckles at the memory of it all, and though it was no laughing matter at the time, it actually served a purpose.

"It was the best thing that could have happened because it meant I could sit everybody down and say: `I don't know what I'm doing here guys because this is just a joke. And I remember Jody Greene and Brian O'Donnell were sitting at the back of the bus and they told me later that they looked at each other and said: `Oh shit, we've got a right one here'."

But it enabled Gatland to establish some new standards. After the game (which Galwegians won), Gatland took £2 off everybody who had been late and bought a round of drinks with it. The next week he put into place some rules about time-keeping. Out of little acorns. Galwegians won the Connacht senior league two years running, winning promotion to the AIL second division at the second attempt and then held their own there for two years.

The New Zealand philosophy decrees that players grow tired of listening to the same coach after three years, or four years at a push. But the Gatlands' situation was complicated by the tragedy of their first child, Shauna, who was born with spina bifida and died at the age of four months.

"Here was a club that had invested four years in me and they said: `You've got to go home to your family; go back to New Zealand. That was the thing about Galwegians and Irish people. They had invested maybe 100 grand in having me and my family in Ireland and yet when it came to it, they were prepared to throw it all away. Rugby was secondary. Family was important."

Aside from the good memories, Gatland always remembered that. So when the call came again from Billy Glynn three years later in September of last year, asking him to assume the mantle at Connacht after Eddie O'Sullivan's sudden departure, he was immediately interested. The rest, as they say, is history. After a 10-week contract and a bit of foot-dragging by the IRFU and the Connacht Branch, last summer, Gatland became Connacht's Director of Rugby on a three-year contract.

It may seem to some like a thankless task, but he has much to impart after a career steeped in the Kiwi game. Like practically all New Zealanders, the Gatland genes had it. For not only was his father a club rugby player in Hamilton, his mother was also an international swimmer. Naturally enough, he started playing when he was five.

"In New Zealand, when you're five, there are competitions week in, week out against other clubs. In the Hamilton area alone, there could be 12 or 14 teams of five-year-olds."

It is with the clubs that all Kiwis, Gatland included, learn their rugby until the schools take over from about the age of 12 to 19. Until he was 21, Gatland actually played number eight with a variety of schools and clubs, mostly Hamilton Boys' High School where he was captain of the first team for three years. He even beat Michael Jones into one of the Waikato regional teams as a number eight.

"I just decided that if I was going to go any further in representative rugby, then I wasn't big enough or tall enough to be a number eight the way the game was going and I wasn't quite quick enough to be an open side, so someone said to me why not go into the front-row as hooker where you still need a bit of skill to throw the ball in and can be quite loose as well, which would suit me."

The following year, he broke into the Hamilton Old Boys as hooker, at the end of which, he was asked to sit on the Waikato bench. After a year of sitting on the bench watching Waikato being relegated, Gatland broke into the team and helped them win automatic promotion.

Augmenting the championship win in 1992 and Ranfury Shield wins over Auckland in Eden Park for the following two years were "some unbelievable matches for Waikato against touring sides. We beat Wales, we beat Argentina, we beat Australia and we beat the Lions in 1993, 38-10. The Lions never touched the ball for about the first 20 minutes and we put up about 20 points. Will Carling said afterwards that it was probably the best team he ever played against at any level for those 20 minutes."

In his third year on the Waikato team, the world cup year of 1997, Gatland was short-listed for the All Blacks tour of Japan and made the tour to Australia in 1988. He played 17 matches for the All Blacks without actually playing any Test matches.

"I sat on the bench for about 50 matches," says Gatland with a deliberate hint of exaggeration and a lesser one of frustration. There would have been an awful lot of New Zealand hookers who would have won an awful lot of Test caps if it weren't for Sean Fitzpatrick.

"A lot of people ask was I pissed off about it, but it was just one of those things that you just can't dwell on. I could quite conceivably have played 30 or 40 Test matches myself if he had been injured or I'd had a lucky break, or whatever reason.

"There's nothing I can do about it. It's just one of those things. It's a difficult thing being involved with the All Blacks. When you're selected, it's hard because the only way you're going to get on is if the team plays badly, and when you're part of a group, you don't want the team to play badly. So you're in a little bit of a Catch 22."

How did he get on with Fitzpatrick? "Yeah, no problems. When there's two guys competing for the same position there's always a little bit of respect. What I take out of is that I know a lot of people have problems with him because of things he says (on the pitch). He didn't really do that to me as a player. He never tried to unsettle me and I just took that as a sign that maybe he respected me as a player."

It was after he had toured Ireland and Britain with the All Blacks in 1989, as understudy to Fitzpatrick, that Gatland was approached by Galwegians to become their player-coach. He explains the decision to take up the post very matter-of-factly, and how he and his wife Trudy both gave up teaching jobs back home.

Yes, but why? "Because Galwegians were the only club who seriously asked me if I wanted to stay and they offered me some incentive to stay," he adds, breaking out into a chuckle as if to imply that he had to buy himself a new wallet at the time.

The motives behind his second coming in Ireland, this time with Connacht, therefore, are more easy to understand. Gatland can be a difficult man to gauge. At first encounter, his demeanour can be akin to Marlon Brando's method school of acting. Words are used economically, perhaps to hide a slight shyness, if only by Irish standards. The grunt sometimes says it all.

That's until you get to know him. And aside from being a chatty fellow with a dry wit, loyalty is a big thing with Gatland and it works both ways. Which is why he's here now and why he'll probably stay here, despite a reputed offer from Northampton believed to be worth over three times his current contract.

A return to New Zealand seems more likely, even though he would probably be tempted by the Northampton challenge and probably believes he could instil some of the togetherness which is a feature of the tight-knit Connacht squad.

As much as the training ground, the tactics, the gameplan, the fitness levels, Gatland still maintains that players have to be motivated to play for the jersey as well.

He has always listened and learned, picking up bits and pieces from the front-line New Zealand coaches and players he's worked with. He wants to go far as a coach. "The ultimate goal would be to coach a national team."

For the time being though, he and Connacht have still some way to go. Gatland doesn't quite know where anymore, "jeez', what do you do after this?"