"Jenno, get over here now, " is the pre-watershed version of his countrymen's cry and Shane Jennings tells them, politely of course, that he hasn't quite finished dictating his words of wisdom into a journalist's tape recorder. Surprisingly, they leave him alone for a good 30 seconds before the abuse starts up again.

This time he politely wraps things up with the scribe and the photo can take place. The octet are arranged in a line, smallest to tallest and, after a few clicks, it's done, the Irish invasion of one of England's most famous clubs, captured for posterity.

As it deserves to be. The eight Irish players at Leicester aren't a fascination just because of the sheer size of the contingent, or because of our natural interest on how our own are getting on abroad, their story also appeals to us because they're not exactly the likely lads, the ones who were always destined to end up at English rugby's pre-eminent club of the past two decades. Just like any great immigration, after a while you stop looking at the numbers involved and instead start to wonder why they've all congregated in one particular spot. With the Leicester Irish, the usual logic doesn't apply. Straight off, it's easy to see that they're not like the eight-strong Irish players up in Sunderland, who've ended up in the north-east corner of England because of the deep Irish connections within the club, from former manager Mick McCarthy to chairman Niall Quinn and current boss Roy Keane.

Leicester, however, have no Irish hierarchy whatsoever, and not a lot of Irish heritage about the place either. The city's last census, back in 2001, listed 3,602 out of 280,000 people who ticked off the 'White Irish' box on the form, about 1.2 per cent of the total population. It's not exactly the Kilburn High Road, even if the club have had a sprinkling of Irish internationals play at Welford Road through the years, from William Davies and Aubrey Dowson in the 1890s to Tony O'Reilly in the late 1950s, and Brian Smith, Niall Malone and Eric Miller much later on that same century. But these guys are the exception, rather than the rule.

So how and why have the current bunch of Irish players ended up plying their trade in the English midlands?

Pat Howard, the man responsible for bringing everybody but Geordan Murphy to the club, comes up with a simple explanation. "I think they're good players, " he quips initially, but you begin to see some logic in his comments as he broadens out his explanation. "When we got Shane Jennings, we'd seen a lot of tape on him heading into the quarter-final of the Heineken Cup two years ago against Leinster. I thought he was an exceptional player from the tape, so we came in for him straight away. He came over here last year and was named players' player of the year in his first season with the club. He did brilliantly. With Leo Cullen, we were looking for leadership. We had a reasonable leader in the second row with the guy that retired [Martin Johnson] and Leo's captained the side over the past couple of weeks at different times, as he did last season on numerous occasions. We were looking for that quality from him when we got him over from Leinster and he's fulfilled that."

The presence of Geordan Murphy, Cullen and Jennings at the club, maybe you can understand, but as we've hinted already, how the other five ended up here might not be so easy to explain. Gavin Hickie, Frank Murphy and Paul Burke, for example, were all third choice in their respective positions for their Irish provinces, while Ian Humphreys and Johnny Murphy didn't even have the comfort of provincial contracts before they joined the Tigers. Have Leicester some kind of sixth sense when it comes to seeing talent that the Irish provinces have essentially dismissed?

"Not really, I mean Leicester get it wrong too, " says Howard. "Some people don't suit certain set-ups, it's as simple as that. John Murphy is a player that was playing with Leinster under-21s, we saw some of their tapes and we thought 'he fits what we're trying to do'. He may not have fitted the style Leinster under-21s were trying to pull off at the time, and as a consequence he probably didn't take that next step up the ladder in Ireland. But we presented him with an opportunity, he's come here and he's done very well. I don't think we've seen the best out of him yet. I know Declan Kidney is a big fan of Paul Burke's and of Frank Murphy's.

There were obviously reasons why they couldn't keep them at Munster but we're really happy to have them here."

They're all pretty happy to be there, too, that's easy to see. It's difficult to pin down but there's something special about the English club environment that hasn't quite been replicated in the Irish provincial scene just yet. Part of it undoubtedly comes from the English training ground scene, where everything is on-site. The Irish provinces, Leinster and Munster at any rate, still have to dash between a couple of different venues in order to get every part of their body in tip-top condition.

Then there's the team selection side of the coin. In Ireland, a good portion of the 'Leicester Eight' couldn't establish themselves as first-team regulars, principally because they had established internationals in front of them. No matter how well they played when the top players were away, they still reverted back to the bench when they returned. "They have a tendency to stick with the tried and tested, " says Frank Murphy, who was reserve behind Peter Stringer for a couple of years at Munster, "but who can fault them for that?" Admittedly, it is a difficult policy to criticise, especially if the provinces maintain the same level of success of the past decade, but it does lead to serious disenchantment among young players. At Leicester, however, the feeling is that if you're doing the business in training, and impressing the right people, you'll be picked no matter who's ahead of you. It's just one part of the club approach that impresses Shane Jennings so much.

"There's a different way of training here, a different way of looking at the game, in fact the whole attitude is different, " says the openside. "It really is a nine-to-five job over here and your club is the be all and end all. It's brilliant. If you talk to any of the lads here, the first thing they talk about is Leicester, it's never about England. It's all about Leicester and how they want to have a good season with Leicester. It's the same with me, if I ever want to progress to play with the international side I have to play well with Leicester. If you play well here, you'll get the recognition."

Jennings also sees a different side to his move, one that has undoubtedly aided the overall development of himself, and probably a number of the other Irish players at Leicester. "Living in Dublin, I was living with my family and you're definitely living in a comfort zone.

I had all my friends around me, all the people I've known for a lot of years whereas over here I kind of just knew no one, it was just myself and Leo at the start. It was great to get out of that comfort zone, to meet a lot of new lads, and you begin to see things a different way."

Not that they aren't visited regularly by the folks at home. "I wince every time I see one of the Irish lads coming towards me saying that their family are coming over, " says Leicester press officer Gary Sherrard. "We have a capacity of 16,000, of which 13,000 is given over to season-ticket holders, so we don't have that many tickets on sale for each match. Things are always tight and when the Irish guys come looking for tickets, let's just say that they're not looking for just the one or two."

In the build-up to today's game against Munster, Frank Murphy has been the most plagued man in all of Leicester for match tickets, but it's a big game for all the Irish players.

"Of course all the Irish lads at this club really want to play this game, " says Jennings. "First of all they're champions of Europe, they're there to be knocked and everybody wants to have a go at them. It will also be nice to remind everybody watching at home exactly what we're up to over at Leicester. With Geordie [Geordan Murphy] here, the Irish coaches keep an eye on things and I suppose we're lucky that a lot of our games are high profile, it's not as if they can't get a DVD of the match."

With the eight of them, Eddie O'Sullivan would do well to keep an eye on Welford Road.

One of those season tickets would be a solid IRFU investment.