Ireland v Australia: Donncha O'Callaghan is keen to add grace notes to his repertoire but wont ever shun the piano shifting, he tells Gerry Thornley

The Miracle Match. It's remembered for many things. But for Donncha O'Callaghan it was the day he came to truly appreciate Alan Gaffney was one of them. Entering the dressing-room after Munster's 33-6 victory over Gloucester in January, 2003 to seal unlikely qualification for the Heineken European Cup quarter-finals., the big lock was stunned to see tears in Gaffney's eyes.

"Up till then he was an Aussie who came from Leinster. Then just to see it mean so much to him kinda opened him up an awful lot more to all of us, we saw he really cared about this. The way he spoke after that game, that's when he became part of the Munster circle, more so than when we won the Celtic League. That set him apart for us."

No coach is universally popular, even within one squad, so to speak, but Gaffney's one-on-one approach, going through individual performances, "either ripping you to shreds or building up your confidence", was very much to O'Callaghan's liking.

"You can only take a guy as he treats you and I found him approachable. I liked the way he was honest - there was no kind of bullshitting around. He told me straight out if there was an aspect of my play he didn't like and then, if I improved that the next week, he was first over to say well done. I appreciated that."

He looks at Australia and sees a good side, and admits he is concerned that Gaffney's other notable strength at Munster was video analysis.

"It would worry me personally because I know how much time he puts in to analysing the opposition. He was brilliant at it for us, and that was people he didn't know, and he knows us so well. That is something that would worry you, but you can't go out thinking about it."

Recent events have prompted more navel contemplation by O'Callaghan than normal. For starters there was the scale of last week's defeat to the All Blacks. As a professional, aspiring to be the best, O'Callaghan admits to some dismay at the occasion.

"To see this huge difference, to be honest, I was bit embarrassed after the game. Marcus (Horan) was saying he was a bit down and I said to him: 'Imagine three weeks of it'. But you can't feel sorry for yourself and drag your arse, especially with this big game coming up. You can't go in thinking there's a massive gulf between the North and South (hemispheres). You've got to look on how we can improve it and play better as a team."

All that said and done, O'Callaghan can't remember taking a beating like it in some time.

"I felt I was chasing my game the more it was going away from us. You were looking to make a massive hit or something, but it just wasn't coming our way. You just get some of these days when you feel like you're chasing shadows, and that was one of them."

The big, easygoing, down-to-earth Munster lock knows he went out to New Zealand as the fifth-choice Lions lock and muscled his way into the starting XV, and he is as conscious as anyone that perhaps more was expected of him since his return.

But through circumstances as much as anything else, the dynamism he showed when first bursting on to the scene, and then the way he revitalised his career with a redemptory performance at number six for Munster in the quarter-final win away to Stade Francais four years ago, has been overtaken by more selfless work-rate.

O'Callaghan judges his own performances on the basis of work-rate - a high tackle count and a high tally of clean-outs at rucks. He's becoming increasingly conscious of adding more ball carries to his game, but is mindful that could affect the work-rate on which he bases his game.

"I set goals at the start of games, and to be honest I think you're pissing in the wind if you're not putting down, for me anyway, I want to be the highest in our pack. Looking at the likes of Johnny O'Connor, Simon Easterby and Denis Leamy, you know you gotta be over the 15 mark."

In Munster, especially, the pack is not short ball-carriers, what with Horan and Frankie Sheahan supplementing an array of backrowers.

The emergence of Paul O'Connell, in particular, as a one-off target runner taking up ball with his trademark ferocity has perhaps emphasised the need for O'Callaghan to do the donkey work.

"Coming from where I come from, I play in a pack where we've an awful lot of ball-carriers, so I end up servicing a lot of rucks, doing a lot of donkey work. To be honest that's unenjoyable play," he admits candidly. "You want to get the ball in your hands and you want to run with it.

"To be fair to Mervyn (Murphy, the video analyst) he's been great in the last few weeks. He's gone through aspects of my play and helped me in video analysis on areas, running a better line to get to the ball.

"But I watched a passage of play in the Munster-Castres game, and Jerry Flannery carried three balls in a row. I was there - it's called key man or link - for every one of his rucks, which is just a bit weird. I could have easily taken on any of those plays.

"It's just a mindset, really, to carry. I want to carry more ball. It's getting the balance in it. I don't want to straight away start carrying loads of ball, and getting no cleans at rucks."

O'Callaghan admits he was much more of a ball-carrier, often as a backrower, in his younger days, which only adds to his frustration. You can't have eight ball-carriers, though the All Blacks are redefining this.

"But maybe, the way it's going, you nearly have to when you look at fellas like Tony Woodcock pulling left-to-right passes and stuff like that. Everyone has to pass and run with it."

Of course, Kiwi forwards have been trained to sidestep, pass off either hand and offload before or in the tackle since their formative years, all of which is fine-tuned in the rarefied atmosphere of the Super 12, where skills are at a premium as in no other competition on the planet.

"I remember chatting to Paulie about it. I don't think you can wait until you get here (Test rugby) to work on that kind of stuff. You gotta arrive here ready to go. I don't really want to go down this route, but maybe that's something for grass roots, to work more there and on provincial level. That's where I'm going to start looking to carry more ball."

So it's not too late at 26 to develop skills then? "Everyone has got to remember we're rugby players, and that's our main focus of training. We'd all like to have individualised programmes, that say maybe Donncha needs to work most on his left-to-right passing, whereas someone else needs to work more on his weights."

Another eye-opener on the Lions tour for him was the sheer professionalism of team-mates, especially the leading English lights such as Lawrence Dallaglio and Neil Back, in pulling specialist coaches aside or seeking individual weights. Even Welsh Grand Slammers, such as Michael Owen, were taken aback by it.

"I have gone a bit selfish that way, which I don't think is a real fault," says O'Callaghan. "If you want to be the best you have to be a bit special. I know it's not necessarily the Munster way, and you get a bit of slagging for it. But it was without doubt the biggest thing I took away from the Lions.

"Individually, and I'm not talking about being handed stuff by coaches, because we have a very good set-up here, but I started to pull these coaches aside myself."

Against that, there are aspects of the Irish scene, both provincially and internationally, he wouldn't swap.

"Like, the work that goes into our lineout is incredible, and it actually frustrated some of us out there (New Zealand) that someone would say, 'No, I don't do that role'. And you're thinking, 'We need you to do it'.

"Maybe John Langford brought it in to Munster, but everyone in our lineout has adapted. Stephen Keogh and Denis Leamy are jumping backrowers whereas they mightn't have been before, because they didn't jump or only lifted at five or whatever, and we can vary our lineout so much because these guys can pull themselves out of a comfort zone."

The other area that blew him away at first, and here he was hardly alone, was the breakdown area - in New Zealand a game in itself.

"I do believe they get away with murder sometimes. If (Richie) McCaw was with another country and gave away the same number of penalties he'd get a lot more yellow cards. But how they compete at the breakdown is at a different level."

Still, it was better to have travelled and lost than not to have travelled at all. Playing in the tour warm-up against Argentina quickly helped him into his stride, not least looking at the number four on the back and thinking from whom he was inheriting the shirt, Martin Johnson. This was some shirt to fill, he thought to himself.

He'd watched the Living with the Lions video, and was a little awestruck by Ian McGeechan. To then be listening to him in a Lions dressing-room, he could scarcely believe it, and hung on every word.

"You only get to wear it for 80 minutes, so make every second count." That stuck with him.

Desperate for a bigger performance from himself and his team-mates now, O'Callaghan may find those words particularly apt when he mulls over them again today.