Interview Austin Healey

A committed uncompromising natural talent: that's what most rugby followers think Austin Healey is. Or something along those lines. And he is in characteristically belligerent form in the build-up to Leicester's Heineken Cup final with Munster this weekend.

At the Tigers' training ground, during a session open to the media, the squad is polishing its scrum technique. On the touchline, a television crew is filming the action. Just as he prepares to put the ball into a scrum within spitting distance of its lens, Healey spots the camera is whirring.

"Oi, you," he yells at the cameraman. "Turn that thing off."

Except he isn't quite as polite as that. The cameraman, somewhat surprised that he has stumbled across such an inviolable secret, looks nonplussed. "I said," reiterates Healey, "turn that thing off."

After the training session has finished, England's all-purpose back trots over to the crew and says: "Sorry I had to speak to you like that." "No, no, understood," says the cameraman. "No need to apologise." "Actually, I don't know why I am apologising," retorts Healey. "I was just pointing out you were off limits. You know, we're here to win."

Rubbing people up the wrong way has long been the modus operandi of this bristling Everton fan. Only he could have got himself into so much trouble over a newspaper column as he did during last year's Lions tour of Australia. Most sportsmen see columns as little more than an opportunity to earn money for old rope (or any other cliche). Healey, though, treated his efforts for this newspaper and the Observer as part anger counselling, part extended wind-up and part dark night of the soul.

Some of us thought his work refreshing, entertaining and above all honest. Others were less sanguine. And after the tour finished he found himself a scapegoat for its failings: if Healey hadn't have been so rude about the Aussies in his column, ran the official line, then they wouldn't have raised their game to win. A ridiculous analysis, worthy of deconstruction in a Healey column, you might think. Only the author has put aside his notebook.

"I'm not talking about that," he says, when the subject is raised. Wasn't he surprised, though, at the reaction of the Lions management? After all, he was fined most of his tour fee for expressing nothing more than a rather entertaining opinion. "Long gone, finished" he says. "Not even going to bother talking about it. Not going to bother talking to you if that's what you want to talk about."

It is tempting, after a start like this, for interviewers to cut their losses and go. But to do that would be to miss out on the most idiosyncratic character in modern rugby. A pain Healey may be, but he is never less than good value. So let's move quickly on. That incident with the cameraman: is he really suggesting that rugby is rife with espionage and that his Munster opponents would be able to glean something of value from watching a 10-second clip on Grandstand?

"Definitely they'd have a little look," he says. "If they can pick up the slightest thing in a 10-second clip they'll go for it. Because it's going to be tight - no one's going to win the Heineken Cup by 50, 60 points. You've got to use any little thing you can to prise open an advantage."

So will he be doing the same and scanning videos of his opponents' preparations? He sighs long and hard. "I think anyone involved in such a big game would make the most of any opportunity they had to find out what was going on," he says, adopting a tone of voice schoolmasters would define as sarky, used by the cocky kid at the back of class responding to a question he regards as frankly bleeding obvious.

And then he yawns ostentatiously. To be fair to Healey as he goes through the publicity motions for European rugby's biggest club event, he is clearly shattered. A season that appears to have been going on for at least a decade already still has another three weeks to grind on, another three weeks of pummelling and pounding and physical punishment.

"I'm looking forward to when it ends, to be honest. I've had enough now," he says. "Play in the final, then have a rest. Concentrate on the big year next year, the World Cup. I'm not going to think about rugby for a month. Because I'm going to be asleep for a month. There's been chat about trying to reduce the number of matches, but I'm just wondering when that's going to happen. It just gets worse."

So what can the players do about it? "Nothing really, can we? It's our job. I'm not complaining - I get paid for it. I'm talking more about Harry Ellis and Jonny Wilkinson, those young players. Their time in the sport is being concertinaed into what could be an eight-year career instead of previously when you could play for 15 years. Seriously, unless something is done about this, I think the next generation that comes through will be lucky to still be playing in their 30s."

Tired he may be, but Healey is not constructing an excuse to hide behind. When Leicester trot out in the Millennium Stadium he will summon every bit of energy left for the task ahead. As anyone who saw him come on for England against Ireland in Dublin last autumn will recount, he is that bravest type of player: the one who always wants the ball even when things are disintegrating around him.

"I don't think it's just me," he says when this analysis is put to him. "If you're a substitute and you've been watching from the sidelines for 60 minutes where it's going wrong, you know what to do. I felt really aggrieved not to be starting so I was very keen to make a mark."

Perhaps that's why he was put on the bench that day, to stoke up his motivation? "I hope not, because I don't want to go back there," he says. "Every professional player thinks they should be starting every game, otherwise they aren't competitive enough. I wanted to prove that I should have been out there from the start."

Did you? "Not really; we lost," he says. "People ask me where I think I should play. I'd prefer nine or 10, the decision-making positions, but I'm always the last to know. I won't know against Munster until the last minute. But don't mind as long as it's not the bench. I always feel I'm good enough to be in the team."

With sentiments like that, though, is it wholly a surprise when people call him arrogant? "Maybe there is a streak of arrogance," he admits. "But I think it's just a competitive side of me coming out." And it is this competitive instinct, honed in a childhood of squabbling with his sister ("I'd cheat, lie, resort to physical violence, anything to win against her") that he reckons makes him stand out.

"I've always had stick from opposing crowds," he says. "I see it as a sign of respect more than anything else. I don't respond, even when they are throwing coins and Lucozade bottles at me like they were in Dublin."

Really? "Yeah, I don't know why, but it's always me."

His choices of commercial activity hardly help to make him a less visible target. There he is, after all, on the back page of every newspaper virtually every day advertising miracle hair replacement. Talk about giving ammunition to the barrackers. "I get plenty of stick for the hair, yes," he says, involuntarily running his hand through what, it would be unfair to report otherwise, looks a very decent weave.

"Hang on, it is my own hair," he says, spotting his questioner's eye-line. "It's a thing that helps you re-grow your own hair. People think it's a wig, but it's not. When they first started shouting 'wig, wig, wig' at me I felt like going up and explaining the science of it, but it kind of goes over my head now. And my hair stays where it is, thank you. And no, before you ask, no one's tried to grab it in a ruck."

Not yet anyway. But the question is: does he encourage notoriety? Does he gain an extra edge of motivation from winding up the crowd, from behaving like a pantomime villain? "No. Not really," he says. "Things have happened over the past 12 months that have drawn attention to me. Obviously the Lions thing. But also having a contract to wear white boots. People think oh yeah, flash git, but it's just a different colour leather. Really there's nothing more to it."

So he would never resort to winding people up? "I didn't say that," he says. "In the right place, yeah. But I don't go out of my way to present a bad image of myself to the public. Yet people get the idea from the things I've done outside the game that I'm flash, arrogant, this, that, the other. I just carry on with it.

"One thing I promise you, from September I'll be doing absolutely nothing outside the game. Soon as the season starts, my only goal is to get to the World Cup. It's not to make money, have my face in the paper or anything like that. Just to get in the World Cup team. And I'm not talking about sitting on the bench either."

Best not. After all, he wouldn't want to get too close to his legion of admirers, anxious to lean over and ruffle the Healey weave in affectionate admiration.