“Leinster? They’ve got loads of dangerous loosies”

With the dream of a World Cup winner’s medal now beyond him, Toulouse and former All Black Byron Kelleher tells Ian Moriarty why a Heineken Cup medal would fit the bill instead

IT MIGHT well be his Irish heritage but Byron Kelleher loves to talk. On the pitch, the 33 year-old scrum-half is best known for barking out orders on 57 different occasions for the All Blacks but he has become more familiar to northern hemisphere eyes – and ears – since he moved to Toulouse following the World Cup in 2007.

Off the pitch, little changes with Kelleher. He has a disconcerting stare when he talks – as if he’s looking through you – which would scare the bejaysus out of a CIA operative, never mind a journalist. Then there’s the Kelleher frame. Anyone who’s played the game knows that the one guy on the pitch you can pick on without repercussions tends to be the scrum-half. Yet Kelleher looks more like a svelte prop. He’s a big hulking barrel of a man, save for the half break of a back-row forward and the nice, crisp pass of err, a scrum-half. It goes without saying he’s looking forward to the battle with Leinster loose forwards.

“Yeah, they’ve got some dangerous ‘loosies’,” he admits before qualifying his point. “They’re a dangerous team all round. They’re competitive for the ball and like to fight for it. But if you put everything face to face, you’ve got French internationals against Irish internationals between the two teams. It’s going to be tough.”

Kelleher has been here before and is particularly wary of Irish sides. He remembers the 2008 final against Munster like it was yesterday and the defeat that left him burning up inside. As with most All Blacks, he’s a competitive guy and if truth be told, apart from the continual saga with New Zealand under-performing at World Cups, he’s never become used to losing. Yet with 2008 still fresh in his mind, he believes the 2010 Stade Toulousain vintage is an altogether different prospect.

“Compared to 2008, I think we can collectively switch playing styles very easily so it doesn’t matter who’s playing inside you or outside you but I also think we’re more disciplined. That’s what cost us the 2008 final against Munster.

“We’re definitely going to have to work on a lot of things in the lead up. Obviously we’re going to have work harder if we want to play some Toulousain-style rugby but saying that, I think we have to be a little more intelligent on how we handle the ball and when we play with it and how we turn them around.”

The last season and a half have ebbed and flowed for Toulouse and for Kelleher. They’ve looked like world beaters at times but the mood prevailing around the city is that they’ve been playing below their level at times. The word consistency has been muttered in sections of the populace and Kelleher agrees they have found it difficult to keep their momentum going at times.

“It’s been demanding for us to go and put in back-to-back performances over the last eight weeks. After the quarter-final against Stade Francais, the team relaxed mentally and couldn’t really switch on against Bourgoin when we lost. “We’re concentrating on game by game. We’ve got a few matches left and we’re concentrating on that. The coaches put an emphasis on the fact that we really need to forget about next week and concentrate on this one.”

With 33 years on the clock, Kelleher is no spring chicken and realises that he’s fast running out of time if he is to land a Heineken Cup. His first season with Toulouse in 2008 was a cracker. Winning the French Championship and holding aloft the Bouclier de Brennus was an amazing experience, he says. The bittersweet taste came in the form of that defeat to Munster in Cardiff but all that’s done is to increase the determination to win this year’s European final in Paris.

“For us, the nucleus of the team has been together for some time now – probably four or five years so you’ve got a lot of experience there. You’ve got to make sure that you don’t miss out on these opportunities because you don’t want to be retired and think: ‘Oh man, we should have won it that year. We had the team for it.’

“Before I left NZ, my dream was I would win both competitions. It was amazing to be part of the Bouclier win and be player of the year. Now I want to make sure that I set my eyes of the Heineken Cup. That’s the reason for me. It’s not the Rugby World Cup but it’s in my dreams and that’s what I want to fulfil. Is that not what we play sports for?”