Denis Hurley is explaining how a lad who grew up in Kells and did his Leaving Cert in St Patrick's in Navan ended up playing for Munster. Not just playing for Munster but being among the elite of that group, those with European winners' medals.

And while he is going through the ins and outs of this, almost as an afterthought, he slips in that rugby was a factor in him moving south to repeat his Leaving.

First there is the detail about points and courses. Hurley had fallen agonisingly short of the target for doing Sports Science in UL, so a pal of his dad's suggested he might repeat in St Munchin's in Limerick, so as, eh, to be close to UL if he hit the jackpot the next year and they gave him the nod. Right. Anything else?

"It was a good change for me and a good reintroduction to Munster," he says. The Hurley family had moved from Cork when he was only starting national school. His dad Gerry has a place in Munster history as the reserve hooker on the 1978 team that beat the All Blacks.

"I suppose things hadn't gone so well for me selection-wise on underage teams in Leinster. It was a joint decision between myself and dad -- move back down and see what happens."

Grand, so having gone in the door of Navan rugby club as a five-year-old claiming to be six, and playing all the way through, the youths system in Leinster had not picked him up. So roll out Plan B. Denis Hurley may be a mild mannered and effortlessly friendly fella, but don't for a moment think that beneath the bonnet is anything other than a competitive engine.

The plan worked. Within a year and a half of leaving St Munchin's, his form for UCC, where he was doing commerce, got him into the Munster Academy. And within three years of that he was picking up a Heineken Cup winner's medal. Simple.

The circumstances of that astonishing rise are worth retelling. In that 2007/'08 season, Hurley was still on a development contract and tipping away nicely. He had started five Magners League games as Munster approached their quarter-final tie away to Gloucester. There was no part of his brain that told him he was about to be parachuted into the starting side ahead of Shaun Payne, whose dependability had earned him huge popularity with the fans. Then, as part of a package with Tomas O'Leary -- who at least we knew something about, and whose European career had started in earnest the previous season -- Hurley was in the run-on team.

Next thing you knew he looked like he was enjoying it all and Declan Kidney was being hailed for the kind of selection that has typified his coaching career. Beneath the surface, however, was a problem just waiting to be exposed.

That process began to unfold a few months after the party in Cardiff. You could blame a combination of Hurley being injured at exactly the wrong time, and the arrival of Keith Earls. Munster had got their pre-season off in brilliant summer sunshine and on a quick track in Connecticut where young Earls was dazzling in the win over the US. Hurley looked at him and started to get nervous -- nervous about the basics of his own game and nervous about when Earls might try his hand at 15. Suddenly the prospect of starting in the Heineken Cup began to slip away. So did everything else.

"I suppose it was a pretty low point of my rugby," he says. "I've always really enjoyed playing my rugby. Loved it. Ever since I first started. There was nothing I'd look forward to more than going out on a Saturday morning as a kid and playing the game. Just couldn't wait to get out there. Last season it got to the point where I was actually questioning if I wanted to be out there at all. My confidence was as low as that. The game I loved so much and grew up with all my life -- I was turning my back on it almost at one point. I had to work hard to try and shrug off that mentality.

"The high ball was an area -- let's say the 2008 (Heineken Cup) final was the first time I'd really encountered any bit of a test on that side of things. It was like learning a whole new skill again. It was just a question of practising it."

His form bottomed out in September last year in a Magners game against Cardiff in Musgrave Park. The problem with full-back is that it's the shop window to the high street. Fetch up there wearing fancy duds and passers by stop to admire. Look like a tramp and they point and laugh. Munster's fans are not so cynical that they turn on their own to that extent, but almost as bad was the shuffling of feet and groans of sympathy for a man clearly going through a crisis. Everyone seemed relieved when he went off after an hour to be replaced by Jeremy Manning.

"Obviously Keith Earls had been playing 15 and scoring tries and playing really well. And all of a sudden it looked like 'Jesus, you're not going to make the starting XV when it comes round to Heineken Cup'. I suppose I was putting pressure on myself that I didn't need to be doing.

"But at least I've had the chance to learn from that. I've made that mistake and I know I'm not going to make it again. I remember in that Cardiff game at one point I did a chip and chase and went up for the ball and I think it was Andy Powell and I cracked my head off the side of his hip, and I was a bit dazed after it. And there was a ball or two that came down to me in the next few minutes and I suppose I wasn't concentrating on it or whatever. Something was wrong. They were the easiest catches to make but my confidence was shot to pieces by that stage.

"The next couple of weeks were tough. Going to training and really not wanting to be there. Struggling really with my own confidence. Talking to dad and that -- he was always the fella who was there since I was a kid. I suppose we've gone through my whole rugby career together if you want to put it that way. A few chats and it got me back on to some bit of a right path. Laying down what I needed to do, and practising what I needed to practice. I was getting a few games with Cork Con. That was what I needed to do to get my confidence back."

Last season wasn't a complete write-off for Denis Hurley, but of his 18 games only nine of them were starts. His gazumping of Shaun Payne was nothing compared to what Earls and Paul Warwick were doing to him. Summer loomed ahead like an oasis, where he could take a bit of time out and plan a comeback. And then he got the call to go to North America with an Ireland side minus its Lions.

"In my mind I was thinking there was no reason for me to be selected on that squad," he says. "I just assumed I wouldn't be so I was quite shocked that I was. It just pepped up my confidence like, that I'm still a good enough player to be selected for a tour."

It was on that trip, and its extension into the Churchill Cup, that Hurley's reincarnation started as a winger. In the modern game of hard-rushing defences, having big wings who can collect cross kicks is a bonus. At 6'3" and over 15 stone, Hurley has physical presence.

His story has not been without interruption since then. He hit the Scarlets with two tries in September but carried the can the next month after Leinster demolished Munster in the RDS. There was no meltdown in his head however. He knew the axe would fall on the flanks and not down the spine of the team. And Hurley does not consider himself central to Munster's fortunes. Still, to be out of the 22 altogether just as the Heineken Cup was starting was a painful blow.

"And then from nowhere I was starting on the wing again," he says. "It was a big call by the management to drop Jean de Villiers (last weekend) and I suppose it was them showing faith in me that I could do a good job. There's probably a mixture of level-headedness and excitement because as soon as I heard last week I was starting I was already losing sleep. You know that kind of way? I felt jingly, if that's a way to describe it. Scittery almost. But at the same time I knew: just do your basics and be solid and if I got an opportunity with ball in hand just make the most of it. Maybe that's the maturity I've grown from last year as such."

And so here he is this afternoon in a place where the locals spot weakness in the way X-rays pick up fractures. It might help a bit that Mick O'Driscoll can translate the abuse that will rain down on them, or not. Either way, it's not Musgrave Park and they don't trade in second chances. But then Hurley is not the same player who went into last Christmas wondering what the hell had happened to his glorious year. And he's keen to crack on with it.

"It's my first run-out in France -- first start," he says. "At that level it's exciting enough for me personally. I'm looking forward to the atmosphere and it'll be something to be enjoyed. I hope anyway that I don't let the crowd get to me because I think it's a spectacle to be enjoyed rather than be afraid of.

"I remember watching that game in Clermont two years ago where they had to pull it out of the depths to get a losing bonus point. The fellas who have been there before know what's in store. I suppose it's up to some of the younger generation now to give them a bit of buzz about playing a French team in their home and looking for a win. That's what we're going down looking for. I don't think anything else will do."

Another trip south for Denis Hurley. Another phase in the grand plan.

Sunday Independent