AFTER his first training session for the Gold Coast Titans back in January, Brian Carney gave a speech in the dressing room. "Powerful" and "impassioned" were the words used by Titans' managing director Michael Searle to describe the Irish man's words. The side's captain, Luke Bailey, admitted afterwards that Carney's speech had a tremendous effect on everyone who heard it.

Yet, less than 12 hours later, the Irish man would be telling Searle that we wanted to go home. He'd had enough.

It wasn't the one training session that tipped him. After a season with the Newcastle Knights, a campaign where he scored 16 tries in 26 games and was named National Rugby League (NRL) winger of the season, Carney spent a bit of time in Wigan during the close season and told close friends of how tough he was finding life in Australia. "He was homesick, " Terry O'Connor, Carney's former teammate and now mentor-cum-agent, said on Sky Sports' Boots 'N' All programme this week. "He didn't want to go back to play with the Titans but as time wore on he got himself together and went back determined to give it a go. He even paid an �800 excess luggage charge on the way back. He was determined to give his all."

Whatever happened between the time he lugged his many bags from the airport, and the end of his intense dressing-room speech, Carney knew he couldn't live a lie on Queensland's Gold Coast and he told Searle as much. "He came here with good intentions, " said the Titans' MD. "To his credit he could've hung around for six months, taken money from our club and walked away. I think he deserves all the credit he should get for having the integrity and honesty to make this decision now."

When he returned to the northern hemisphere in January, playing any code of rugby was far from his mind. Anybody who thinks his Australia exit strategy was a carefully laid plan to get a contract with Munster is barking up the wrong tree. Foremost on Carney's mind was finishing his Masters Degree in Commercial Law from UCD. He already holds a Degree in Business and Legal Studies from the University. He was also keen to spend more time with his family. Carney's father now runs a hotel, Hotel Tara, in a region called Njiregyhaza in eastern Hungary, but at least back in Ireland he'd be able to visit him on a far more frequent basis.

"He wasn't thinking about playing any type of rugby again when he came back at first, " said O'Connor. "He asked me to take a few calls for him when he was back in Britain because people kept calling him with various offers." That view is echoed by Brian Corrigan, the man who first roped Carney into playing rugby league back in 1997. "I thought he was going to make a living from the media, " he admits. "Since he came back he's appeared on Boots 'N' All a few times and he was also on The Footie Show in Australia. His media stuff is very good, he comes across very well but when the Munster thing came up I can see why he jumped at it. He's a Cork boy and he's very proud of that fact. Ever since I've known him, he's always let everyone know he's from Cork." Just like any Cork person you've ever met, really.

The wonder in all this . . . his Cork childhood, his Clongowes Wood College education, his Gaelic Football playing days with Valleymount in Wicklow after his family shifted base . . . was that he ended up playing rugby league at all. At school, he played a bit of rugby union here and there but was never one of Clongowes' most celebrated players. He continued to tip away at it with Lansdowne juniors at J1 level while at university but he never really took to union and union never took to him.

"Back then he used to play football for Valleymount in the morning and Lansdowne in the afternoon, " recalls Corrigan. "He was a committed, hardy kind of fella. He was a decent union player, he was capable of making a break and his power on the ball was impressive. But he didn't like the fact that he didn't see that much of the ball and that's why I asked him to play a few rugby league games with the Dublin Blues."

As cliched as it may sound, Carney was an instant success in league. The 13man game suited him far better, particularly the opportunity to get on the ball a bit more and, from playing his first game in 1997, he was selected for Ireland's first ever full international against France back in November 1998. Alongside a team of professionals from across the water, all of whom possessed pretty tenuous Irish links, Carney, the one amateur in the starting line-up, made quite an impression. "You know the one thing about him?"

Martin Crompton, Irish captain on the day, said about him after the game. "He's tough, very tough and that's the starting point."

Within a couple of months he was playing professionally with Gateshead Thunder, then Hull and, in 2000, Wigan. A buccaneering wing bustling with enthusiasm, blessed with natural pace and with a keen eye for the tryline, Carney won a Challenge Cup with the Warriors in 2002 and the following year he made his Great Britain and Ireland debut against Australia at the JJB Stadium, his home patch.

The contradiction of playing for Great Britain and Ireland didn't bother him all that much. He never metaphorically wrapped the Union Jack around him, nor did he ever utter a word of God Save the Queen, but he was known to point to the words "and Ireland" beside the Great Britain crest if anybody quizzed him intently on the matter. He made the last of his 14 caps for Great Britain and Ireland against Australia in the Tri-Nations last November, a game that has proved to be both his last game of league (thus far anyway) and the last act of his southern hemisphere adventure.

His present, and future, is now Munster.

"He has a bit of an advantage from other guys switching codes, " says Corrigan, an aficionado of both forms of rugby. "He knows the ins-and-outs of union from Clongowes and his time with Lansdowne so he's not going into this Munster thing completely cold. That will help him."

Common consensus is that he'll play for Munster on the wing but a number of cross-code experts believe that Carney could make a world-class full-back in union, that is if Munster have the time and patience to develop him as such. The problem with this, you figure, is that the province don't have either commodity in any great quantity and they'll be happy enough if he can settle on the wing and do a job there.

Personality wise, nobody has any worries about him fitting in at Munster. Carney's an intelligent fella, a natural leader, one, as he showed in his last hours with the Titans, who isn't afraid to stand up and say his piece. He's also a bit of a joker. A Wigan local radio phone-in show had a consistent caller one season complaining about the form of Terry O'Connor. The mystery caller was later revealed to be Carney, his team mate. Donncha O'Callaghan, Munster's prankster-in-residence, may have some serious competition for his long-held crown over the coming two seasons.

As for international rugby, Carney remains an intruiging possibility. Back in 2004, current Irish defence coach Graham Steadman, then holding the same position with Munster, was asked whether he would recommend that the IRFU chase him.

"Without question, " was his instant response. "He's a quality footballer and I don't think they have that much depth when it comes to wingers." The lack of depth at wing hasn't changed in the interim and now that Carney's firmly within the Irish system, you sense that Eddie O'Sullivan might be inclined to include him in his understrength summer tour squad to Argentina. That's only if, however, he can build on last night's effort against Ulster and improve game on game until May.

It's been a remarkable journey already.

You don't doubt it will continue.