Jerry Flannery: 'It might be daunting, but you have to have a proper go'

He and the rest of the coaching staff understand that insatiable desire because they created it as players. Now, they are under a different kind of pressure.

"This is something that has stuck in my head as a coach," the former hooker explains.

"Every day I'm learning something, in two years' time I'm going to have so much knowledge, but I could be sacked if we haven't won a European Cup by then.

"You'd be going, 'if only I'd had another year', but you've got to be quicker than that. We just want to get off to a good start and build from there."

A few months ago, the 41-times capped Ireland international looked like he was embarking on a very different career path when the call came through from Anthony Foley, beckoning him home.

He spent last season in a contrasting sporting environment as a strength and conditioning coach at the Arsenal FC academy.

Opportunity

The opportunity arose through the academy's head of sports Des Ryan who coached Flannery and Johnny O'Connor at Connacht and invited them to join him in London.

It opened the Limerick native's eyes to plenty of things, chief amongst them his desire to get back into rugby. He just wasn't expecting the call to come so soon.

"I enjoyed the year working at Arsenal," he recalls. "I was going to come home after six months, I was in St Alban's where Arsenal's training ground is. It's pretty boring there, I was there on my tod.

"Everyone says 'Oh, you're in London, it must be a great laugh' but it wasn't, it's was boring!

"I enjoyed the job and they're sound lads. It's great to see them progressing and I think that's where I caught the coaching bug.

"They asked me to stay on (after six months), so I agreed to stay on part-time, I flew over and back every week for the rest of the year.

"I would have stayed at Arsenal this year, but Axel rang me and asked me to come back.

"I'd always wanted to come back to Munster at some stage but I was conscious of being that guy who retires and says 'Oh, give me a job', hanging around like a sap.

"I was looking forward to living in London for a year, I was going to live in Camden or somewhere decent and commute to work, but my missus was sound about coming back to work here.

"I didn't think it would happen this quickly, but the opportunity came up and I jumped at it."

Foley isn't the kind of man Flannery could say no to having blazed a trail for the 35-year-old.

"He's a man with real conviction and he's a good f***ing coach," he says of his new boss.

"He's good, really good. He's given me a break, I'd played with him and always looked up to him. When I was at St Munchin's, he was the senior team captain, he was on the Ireland Schools team.

"He forged a path, I was at Munchin's and I saw Axel captain Munster, captain Ireland. I thought 'he's from the same school as me, I can do that'. I see him as a coach now and he's a good guy, I know where I stand with him."

Arsenal wasn't Flannery's sole focus over the past year or two as he combined the role with his business commitments and his job as a pundit on TG4.

While the day job opened his eyes to a different sporting world, his weekend work exposed him to the other side of the rugby coin.

"I liked doing the media stuff just because it kept me involved," he says of the analysis. "When I was a player I would see it that 'we've won, we mightn't have played well, but we'll get better' and you'd get pissed off with some ex-player saying 'they're not great'.

"But, I understood then that you have to call it as you see it and if they're not great, you say it. I've a better appreciation of that now, you can't be like that f***ing cheerleader. If Munster play s*** at the weekend and scrape a win, you don't say, 'wahay, that was a great win', you say 'that was pretty s***'."

It also provided him with a good perspective on Rob Penney's Munster, having analysed their performances for the viewers.

This time last year, he penned a blog saying the province were behind Leinster and Ulster in the pecking order. So, now that he's involved, have they caught up?

"It's very hard to tell," he says. "A lot of it comes down to how you're represented on the national side. That gives you an idea of where you're at.

Stronger

"Even though it's putting it all in the hands of Joe Schmidt, it gives you an idea. When Munster were stronger before, rather than saying 'what's our first centre like now compared to our first centre when we won the first Heineken Cup', you'd say how many players did Munster have in the national side?

"We used to have 11 players in the national set-up for match-days. That's the goal, we want to get our lads into the national set-up and, for us to do that, Munster need to consistently play well and challenge for trophies as well.

"I don't think it's going to happen over the autumn, I don't think we're going to get a sudden, huge influx of Munster players in - I'd love if it happened, but that's where it is.

"Leinster have been the dominant Irish side since 2009, Ulster have brought in a lot of top class players and brought through a number of top class players so that's kind of the lie of the land at the moment.

"I don't feel inferior to the other provinces, but if you're going to judge things you judge winter to winter, summer to summer and we'll judge next season compared to this season."

In order to get there, they'll need to perform in Europe where a tough pool pits them against two of last year's other semi-finalists, Saracens and Clermont, and Sale in a race to the quarters.

"It is going to be difficult, it's almost the same every year, you look at another 'group of death' and say 'when isn't it?" he admits.

"But, it is going to be tricky, you can consider it daunting but if you're going to come back and have a go you might as well have a f***ing proper go.

"If we get through that pool we'll know we've earned where we are and we'll know we're in a good position to challenge."

The old tournament gave him many great days and happy memories, now he's tasked with facilitating future success.

He got a taste of the global game of football where "two guys in Libya are discussing the results", now he's back in the local world doing it for his own people.

"The biggest thing I learned from being over at Arsenal was how much I missed rugby. I love Munster rugby, I love Irish rugby, I love this sport," he explains.

"I love the honesty in the sport, it's incredibly rare that anyone gets anywhere without being an honest, hard-working person and I like the fact that the players respect the people they work with here - that's not to say the footballers don't, but it's just the nature of rugby."

The road back to the top begins in Sale on Friday. Flannery's back where he belongs, but the new job brings new pressure and he's hoping to thrive under it.