“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.