Simon Easterby? Neater and tighter. Ronan O'Gara? A seemingly timeless coiffure.

John Hayes? We don't have a microscope to examine the stubble length but that look has never gone out of fashion.

Just like this particular quintet. Six years ago, these freshfaced innocents, let's call them the Scotland Five, made their international debuts against, you've guessed it, Scotland at Lansdowne Road, and six years later they're all going to start against the same opposition at the same venue. Some people have had Volvos that haven't been so reliable for so long.

You'd imagine there must have been a state of panic to introduce five new caps into international rugby on the same afternoon, and you wouldn't be wrong. Two weeks before that game at Lansdowne Road, Warren Gatland's Ireland were demolished by England at Twickenham. It was hands over the eyes stuff, 50-18 the final score and, if anything, it was unfair on the home side.

A genuine mauling if ever there was one. A few changes for the next game? Try half the team. Mick Galwey, Denis Hickie and Girvan Dempsey came into the starting line-up as well as our five debutants.

But you know something?

No matter what happened against England, that was always the plan. "We'd been beaten by Argentina in the World Cup, " says Donal Lenihan, Irish manager back in 2000, "and we were well aware that we had to change things around drastically for the Six Nations. Change always happens after a World Cup, especially an unsuccessful one, but our first game was against England at Twickenham and, to be honest, we thought better of making too many adjustments.

Ronan O'Gara would have started were it not for a knee injury but in general it's not the place to introduce new blood and we decided to keep the young guys until the home game against Scotland."

It proved to be a cute move by the management team, which at the time consisted of Lenihan as manager, Gatland as head coach and Eddie O'Sullivan as the New Zealander's post-World Cup assistant.

Italy were up in Dublin after Scotland, with the plan being to field the same team for both games as a confidence-building measure before a daunting trip to Paris. As it turned out, it wasn't a plan that needed justification. Despite a slow, slow start things gradually came together and by Joel Dume's final whistle, Ireland had posted their highest ever Five or Six Nations' points tally in a 44-22 victory. Horgan scored a try on his debut on the right wing despite the assault controversy which dogged him in the build-up to the game, while O'Gara kicked 10 points before making way for David Humphreys on 52 minutes. "We were aware that we needed to ease Ronan into international rugby so the substitution wasn't a comment on his performance, " says Lenihan. "All of the new guys did good things that day if I remember correctly. Shane Horgan proved to us that he did have the footballing ability we all felt he had by doing well out of position, while Stringer and Hayes did very little wrong. Simon Easterby may have been off the radar of many rugby followers but we'd been keeping an eye on him for quite a while and knew what he was capable of."

The ratings in the Sunday Tribune the next day show, as Lenihan intimates, that the posse edged their way onto the scene rather than exploded. Horgan was awarded a six having "performed adequately after a nervous start". O'Gara got the same mark, although he was labelled "unconvincing", as did Hayes, who was deemed to be "not the finished article", and Easterby who "struggled to make an impact". The only one to rise above his fellow debutants was Stringer, who was given a seven out of 10 on the day having "grown in confidence as the game went on".

Despite those mixed bag of efforts, all five were retained for the thrashing of Italy a couple of weeks later while Horgan was the only one to miss out, through injury, on that seismic victory over France in Paris a fortnight after that. Established in an instant, the five have been there or there abouts for Ireland ever since. Saturday's game against Scotland at Lansdowne Road will be the international side's 69th fixture since that February afternoon six years ago and the cap tallies of each player make instructive viewing. Stringer has been the most omnipresent of the bunch, with 64 caps on the mantelpiece. Hayes is next with 60, and O'Gara's not far behind on 58. Easterby and Horgan have 47 and 43 appearances to their names, respectively, totals that have as much to do with spells on the treatment table than anything else.

"If you had told any of us that day that those same five players would be playing against Scotland six years later, we would have laughed at you, " says Lenihan. "It was a transitional period in Irish rugby and there was a huge uncertainty around the place.

Certainly, we had no doubts as to the abilities of the five lads but on average you'd probably expect one or two of any five new caps to fall by the wayside. The fact that they're still there is a huge credit to each one of them."

It sure is and it's undoubtedly unique, even for their staying power. If you check through the starting line-ups for all Six Nations' sides on that same afternoon six years back, it makes for some interesting reading. There's only one player from back then, Scott Murray, who's likely to start for Scotland on Saturday, while Wales' game against Italy next weekend will see Shane Williams, Cristian Stoica and Marco Bergamasco as the only survivors from 2000. France, meanwhile, will have Fabien Pelous, Christophe Dominici and Thomas Castaignede as their representatives from their fixture against England that year, with Mike Tindall and Ben Cohen the only survivors from their side's famous victory in Paris on the same afternoon. Ireland, apart from the Scotland Five, will also have Malcolm O'Kelly and Brian O'Driscoll in the ranks of men who've stood the test of time.

It's quite a number and one Lenihan puts down to the dawn of professionalism. "We had it in name for quite a few years since 1995 but the likes of O'Gara, Stringer, Hayes, Horgan and Easterby were actually the first crop of internationals to break through who'd known professionalism since they left school.

They knew how to physically prepare for games and they knew how to behave themselves on and off the pitch.

Years ago, guys used to come in for their debuts and they'd never be seen again after that but these five were professional athletes and it was not only their ambition, but also their job, to hang around the set-up for quite a while."

The Scotland Five? How about we call them the Professionals.