Jamie Heaslip sets sights on World Cup

The only surprise here is that Heaslip has even heard of Robbins, the American self-help guru. It's not as though Ireland's number eight is in need of assertiveness training. In every sense, he is a big personality.

At Croke Park last Saturday, his confidence proclaimed itself even before kick-off as he stood for the anthems, the only player on either side to dispense with a tracksuit in the freezing fog. "I was warm enough," he explains. "I just wanted to get on with the game."

And so he did. All afternoon, whether he was turning foul-smelling scrum ball into yardage gain by explosive yet supremely balanced running, ramming rucks or passing with the sympathy of a centre, right up to that savage roar of triumph on the final whistle, he radiated the positive energy that characterises this side.

Such overt celebration was frowned upon in the past but Heaslip is of his own time. Last Saturday morning in the Shelbourne Hotel, he and roommate Rob Kearney happened across an Ireland game from the early 1990s on the television. They saw a sport they barely recognised.

"The jerseys were just massive, enormous things," Heaslip says. "And their version of rucking was a whole lot different from what we do now. The ref was like, 'If you're on the wrong side of the ball, that's your problem'. Which is fair enough, I think. We've gotten very polite."

He might also have noticed that try-scoring celebrations were more muted in the old days, too - no finger-wagging on your way over the line back then. Even his own teammates give Heaslip stick for being "a bit of a soccer player" - the 25-year-old with the silver, sporty Merc, the bachelor pad apartment, the tongue-stud, the yellow boots and the occasional showboating. In truth, rugby could do with a few more colourful characters but, at one stage, Heaslip's exuberance counted against him professionally.

There's a story from the eve of his Test debut against the Pacific Islanders at Lansdowne Road three years ago. As the players were walking the pitch, Eddie O'Sullivan pulled Heaslip to one side and pointed to a seat in the Lower West Stand. "See that seat?" asked the coach. "If I see you wagging your finger before or after you've scored a try, you'll be sitting up there beside me before you can even catch your breath."

Heaslip will only admit that "maybe Eddie didn't like that showboating side of me." What about Kidney? "He just asks that I wait till I've scored before I celebrate." And Michael Cheika? "No, Cheiks never said anything. I think he was one of the first coaches who was liking the idea of my boots being a different colour and stuff like that. He wanted a pair of white ones himself. He wears them now in training. But he's always been about players being themselves. The boots don't make the player."

While we're on the subject, it emerges that he has the words 'Shake' and 'Bake' inscribed on his current pair - not stitched in by the manufacturer like a personalised reg plate, but stencilled on by Heaslip himself with indelible markers. An explanation?

"It's from a movie, Talladega Nights with Will Ferrell," he says. "It's a hard one to explain. You'll have to watch the film. The lads take the mickey out of me more for it but it's just a stupid little phrase I use to refocus during games. It's a bit 'out there', I know."

The zany, overgrown adolescent exterior is slightly deceptive. Sure, he can appear ridiculously laid-back on the morning of Test matches and admits to popping the odd caffeine tablet before going out for the team warm-up, but you can't play number eight for the Lions - one of only five tourists to start all three Tests last summer - unless you know what you are about.

"Jamie's totally chilled and laid-back but it's a bit misleading," says Jonathan Sexton. "He takes his rugby very, very seriously. He's ultra-professional, in terms of his preparation and nutrition and so on. Like, I don't want to jinx him but he hardly ever gets injured, and that must say something about the way he looks after himself. As for his game-knowledge, he'd know all the moves and everything backwards.

"He trains 100%, kills lads in contact sessions. And while he's not a big rugby talker, when he does talk, he's very serious. So he does play up to it a little bit, yeah. Twenty minutes before we go out, you wouldn't know where his mind would be. But he probably has the mix just right. He knows what works for him."

Sure enough, when you ask him about the job Ireland did in dismantling Springboks' lineout, and how Paul O'Connell took decoding lessons in Afrikaans from forwards coach Gert Smal, he claims ignorance - "Paulie's the lineout geek, I just go where I'm told." At the same time, on the subject of the Boks' general fallibility, he speaks coherently and enthusiastically. "Jeez, they kick a lot, don't they?" he says "That's the way they were in the summer. They're a simple team. They're clever but they don't have an amazing game-plan. They get around the corner, smash it up, play position and put pressure on through simple, aggressive carries by the forwards. Then in defence, they just smother you.

"But if you go at them hard and win the collision zones, like we did, you can get on top of them and work them, and I don't know if they're used to teams working them too hard. We were behind at half-time but we've been behind a lot at half-time this year. We knew we might not get in front until the final quarter and that's the way it turned out. If there was a turning point it was that great poach by Paulie."

It's only on the issue of the strained relations between the sides that he is a little reserved, verging on diplomatic. Why didn't the Springboks applaud the winners off the pitch? "Maybe they got a little bit confused because we shook hands with them on the pitch," he says, straight-faced. "Yeah, it was a little bit odd but I don't think we should read too much into it."

What about the leaking to a rugby website of the news that the Springbok management had wanted Heaslip cited for alleged foul play? "The first I heard of it was when my mum rang me on Monday afternoon. I was a bit p****d off, yeah. I thought the way it worked was nothing was made public until someone was actually cited. I just thought it was a little bit cheeky."

He didn't let this spoil the few days off he was granted last week, however. Having partied with his Ireland teammates on Saturday and Sunday nights, on Monday he was out again, this time to celebrate a friend's exam results - a bunch of buddies from Naas, the same crew he holidayed with in New York immediately after the Lions tour. That he stays so close to pals he has known since they were all 12 is a sign that he remains well-grounded, despite a stratospherically successful 2009.

Rejoining the Leinster family after the November break is an attractive prospect for him. He is aware - and proud - of the fact that next Saturday's Heineken Cup game in Parc y Scarlets will be his 100th competitive match for the province, which is fair going for someone who made his debut in March 2005 and reinforces Jonathan Sexton's point about his durability.

He did, however, have to be reminded that the Scarlets lead Pool Six after their surprising win away to London Irish back in round two. He has a bit of homework to do this week, given the Scarlets are a significantly different side from the last time Heaslip played in West Wales, a horrifically wet afternoon two seasons ago.

Understandably, he was still in Ireland mode last week, happy to talk about the possibilities for a side growing in self-belief and for a coaching team constantly stretching boundaries. He was impressed how, after the Lions tour, Kidney and his technical team interviewed players in groups of two or three, looking for insights and ideas.

"Yeah, myself and Rob and Luke were in with the coaches, just talking about the way things were done, down to coaching drills or supplements or whatever. The idea was to bring something back if you thought it could make an improvement to the squad. He's always looking for little edges, and if you can build up all those little edges over the next two years, it could make a massive difference. He's always talking about self-improvement."

If the coach has one beef with his number eight, it's those boots. "Yeah, he slags me off about my boots, constantly. I'm trying to get him into a pair of those yellow ones I have now, but not a chance. He knows we're all different characters. That's one of his strengths. He's not going to try and change who you are." Sure, why would you try and change our Jamie?

ON TV ON SATURDAY Scarlets v Leinster 5.45pm, kick-off 6pm Sky Sports 1