On the face of it, Mike Mullins's career story seems almost to have been pre-ordained. He's been plying his trade for five years now in the city where his father, Tom, was born and reared before emigrating to New Zealand. Yet, a meeting with Warren Gatland tomorrow will also remind him how fickle it all is.

It was five seasons ago when Mullins was seeing out an unhappy spell with West Hartlepool after an equally difficult time at Waterloo.

Money promised had again not been paid, and a proposed move to Connacht with Glenn Ross having also fallen through, Mullins was resigned to packing the game in and heading back to New Zealand when Gatland came along to run the rule over another West Hartlepool Kiwi of Irish ancestry, hooker Shane McDonald.

Gatland thinks the match was against Richmond, Mullins can't remember. In any event, the latter had a cracking game and by chance Gatland was alerted to the centre's Irish qualifications by the then Irish physio Craig White (now at Wasps). The rest, as they say, is history.

Mullins was picked for an A game against Italy, and on the subsequent tour to Australia. Such were the vagaries of a professional rugby player's lot that Mullins couldn't afford to bring his wife, Francine, and daughter Cherelle out to England. By then he hadn't seen them in almost 10 months and had to convince Francine that their future was, after all, going to be in the land of his father.

A newcomer within the Irish set-up, cut adrift from his family and the country he grew up in, he also cut an almost sad figure on that tour. Yet, he was clearly a resolute and phlegmatic character. Mullins has made himself a better player in Ireland, and at 33 is playing as well as ever.

Limerick and Ireland, or perhaps more pertinently Munster, have been good for him. Always an interesting character, different from most in this sport, he's a less intense, mellower figure than five years ago.

Maybe that impression is conveyed by the purple T-shirt emblazoned with "Baileys Beach", which is just outside his home town of Dargaville on the north-western coastline of the northern island of New Zealand.

"For the last two and a half years I've tried to dress like a normal person," he explains, "you get sick of wearing tracksuits every day."

Dargaville - the way Mullins describes it - is a little, remote town with a population of about 8,000, two and a half hours from Auckland. So how did Tom, a labourer and cleaning contractor, end up out there?

"He had a couple of sisters out there and they said this was the place to be. Lots of work, won't get into trouble - or as much trouble as he was getting into in Ireland," laughs Mullins. "He was only 19 at the time."

There he met Mullins's mother, Sharon, in Auckland, and returned to her native town, Dargaville, when Mike was only eight months old. He manages to get back most summers, and amongst other things does a bit of electrical work around the house, while his younger brother Martin runs a printing company in Auckland.

Like most Kiwis, Mullins took up rugby barefoot at five. "It was a working-class upbringing, but we never really went without and my parents were always taking us around to rugby tournaments, making sure we got to games, and even though we didn't have much we always got spoiled."

Yesterday week, he signed another two-year contract, despite being downgraded from an international to a provincial contract, so also having to return his Ford Mondeo.

He could have gone for more money to France, but right now he and his family (his daughter Cherelle is 15 and his son Kalib will be four in September) are happy in Ireland, and there wasn't much of a future in that option either.

"The union know I probably don't want to leave anyway," he says, a tad wryly. "And honestly I didn't want to leave. My kids are settled here in Ireland. My daughter is doing her Junior cert now, so I don't want to take her out of school and move her.

"How can you put a figure on moving? Is it worth an extra 50 or 60 grand if you're happy where you are? If I was in it for the money I would have left four years ago."

They moved from Castletroy, buying a house in Annacotty, and Mullins has started taking his first steps into coaching, which he would like to do either on its own or in combination with his qualifications as an electrician.

Not that he necessarily plans on retiring at 35, citing Allan Bateman and Diego Dominguez as examples of players he could emulate by playing on until his late 30s. "Why not? Where's the rule which says you can't?"

You look for secrets to his longevity. Perhaps it's because he takes extra care of himself. Munching chicken wings at the time, he's quick to dispel that theory. Perhaps it's the influence of Francine, who practises reiki - a relaxation and healing therapy cultivated by Tibetan monks more than 2,000 years ago.

"I'm attuned to it and initiated in it, and I sort of practise it a little bit," he says, but plays down its influence. He reckons his current hot streak of form in Munster's last three games might have more to do with the broken jaw he suffered at an Irish training session and the resultant seven-week break.

There was little Francine's hands could do to heal a broken jaw, which left Mullins wired up and obliged to feed himself through straws for two and a half weeks. "So I was unable to eat. I even put my Chinese through a bloody blender. And a friend of mine gave me a baby beaker.

"The body definitely got a rest, and I was able to spend more time in the gym, on the rowing machine, and running. I broke it up with a bit of boxing on bags to improve the power."

Not in enough pain from his broken jaw, the day after his operation Mullins had another three tattoos on his right forearm - the initials of his wife and two children - to go above a scorpion (his astrological sign).

All told, he counts out 11 now, although he's not really sure. They're mostly of Maori or Irish origin, though he concedes they're addictive and are as much a fashion statement as anything spiritual.

"I'm 33, not 23 or 24 like most of these guys, and I come from a mix of cultures. I've enough Maori in me to play for the New Zealand Maoris. I can probably get away with it more easily than a pure-bred Irishman.

"This is how I came here as well, so people have got to accept this is Mike Mullins; covered in tattoos, wears ear-rings, dyes his hair or whatever."

There are other souvenirs or mementoes he'd like from life, and as consumed as anyone else in the province, today he and his team-mates stand within two games of their holy grail. Ask him what's left and he says simply: "Win the European Cup.

"I'm sure all of us would be happy. The joke is what would happen if you did win the European Cup, or if you won the Lotto, would you retire? Win the European Cup first and then win the Lotto."

Ideally, in that order.