Mature student relishing his graduation

The Munster hooker tells Gerry Thornley about his circuitous route to the top

As you'd expect from a hungry young player honed and hardened in the culture of Limerick rugby, no one could want it more. Everything you learn about Jerry Flannery, every step he's taken, be it to UCC or to decamp to Galwegians and Connacht for a couple of seasons, has been with a view to furthering his game.

It is a well-worn path of late - Shannon, then Munster, then Ireland. And at 27, Flannery is not exactly at the start of the journey. The Munster hooker has had to serve his time. But then things don't tend to come easily thereabouts.

"It's true, there's a kind of apprenticeship you have to serve here and I've done my apprenticeship," he says. "But there's such a good standard of forward in Munster that no one just walks into the pack. It is kind of frustrating, especially when you're going on in your career and you're seen as an understudy. I didn't want to look back on my career and think that I was just a sub for three years."

No chance of that now. A regular starter since Frankie Sheahan suffered a disc injury in his neck in the first meeting with Sale, he is younger than Shane Byrne and more dynamic than Rory Best. If Flannery maintains his current form there's a sound argument for him starting against Italy.

Consumed by rugby since he was a nipper, he works hard at his game and at times has had to be eased off by the Munster staff. Fiercely competitive, he has that bit of Munster dog in him too. Like so many Munster forwards, he was a bit of a firebrand in his earlier days, according to his sometimes Shannon coach Mick Galwey, who remembers being struck when the then 19-year-old nudged his way into the first-team squad.

"He was cocky in the right way. He knew his place, but he wasn't going to be bullied either, and if his chance came he would take it. He would be ruthless in a way, and it's the same now." Fiercely loyal too, Flannery remains "a good club man", says Galwey.

Flannery, it will be recalled, played a Celtic League match for Munster on a Friday night and the following day was "man of the match" for Shannon in the AIL final.

"That would be typical of him," says Galwey. "He's a special kind of person and a special kind of player. He takes the knocks and the bruises and always gives 100 per cent whoever he plays for. People say he's slight, but he's a strong scrummager and he's all there. You should see that fella togged out, and he'll have a great battle with Sebastien Bruno today. That's what he wants, those kind of battles."

Schooled in Limerick rugby, the only child of Jerry and Jane Flannery grew up in Rathuard in Limerick, and owes a debt to his father for introducing him to the game as an eight-year-old with the local junior club, Presentation.

"My old fella and all his mates played with Presentation and when they all had kids they brought us up there to the mini-rugby teams. My da was president and myself and all my mates went up to play there. We kind of broke up when we all went to secondary school.

"Some went to Thomond, some of us went to Shannon, and I also played for St Munchin's, which is a real rugby school. But you played as much as you could for the club."

Like his father, Flannery played at prop a fair bit, and also flanker, before settling down as a hooker. It was at St Munchin's that he took to the game in a major way, thanks in the main to his coach there, Seán Conneally.

"There's always one fella who is massive, but then never gets any bigger, or then there's one fella who runs around everyone. I was never either of those, but he (Conneally) showed a lot of faith in me and was the first to do so. He made me vice-captain on my first year on the seniors.

"I was never a stand-out player, like a Ciarán Scally or somebody. But then as I got older and started getting a bit of recognition, getting on to under-18s and Irish schools team, I realised, 'I might have a future if I keep my head down and I train hard'. "

It helped too, that he was consumed by Limerick's rugby culture. "It's massive in Limerick. All your mates play, everyone talks about rugby, everyone hangs around together and it's almost like a competition to see who can go the furthest in rugby."

Some of those earliest friends still play, some don't, but all are fanatics and all will be in Thomond Park today if they got their hands on tickets.

Flannery first suspected he might be some way good at rugby when St Munchin's reached the semi-finals of the Munster Schools Senior Cup, only to lose 3-0 to Ardscoil Rís.

"I repeated my Leaving Cert because of the way we lost that game. It was so disappointing, a real sickener. I practised and played so much in the second year that I actually did worse in my Leaving, which my mother wasn't too happy about, and I would have repeated my Leaving again if I could, but it was perhaps just as well I couldn't."

The idea of having a third go at it was because St Munchin's lost the final the following year to CBC.

The CBC defeat still rankles a little.

"I could be bitter about it and tell you that they brought in a load of players from the junior ranks, like Donncha O'Callaghan," he says, partly tongue-in-cheek. "Three or four Munster Youths players who were underage surprisingly ended up at Christians. You'd run into them during the year and think, 'Who the hell are these guys? . . . I suppose plenty of schools do it now."

On leaving school, he was naturally lured toward Shannon and started playing a little senior rugby with them, but, to his surprise and that of his parents, discovered his points from his first Leaving Cert would get him into Arts at UCC. To their credit, Niall O'Donovan and Pat Murray advised him to take that course, saying that it was too big an opportunity to turn down and he could always come back to Shannon.

"An absolutely brilliant time," Flannery says of UCC. "When you play schools rugby it's a lot of pressure rugby. But when I went down to UCC at our first training session our coach Peter Melia had us practising our chipping and catching - y'know, chipping the ball over people's heads and catching it.

"He wanted us to learn all the skills and we played against these big, old, fat packs, and we took quick taps and ran the ball from everywhere. It was brilliant. There's few teams now where young lads can come up and throw the ball around like that."

The way Flannery describes it, this was almost an old-fashioned introduction to senior rugby, though he points out that the likes of Peter Stringer, Mick O'Driscoll, Denis Leamy, Sheahan, Jeremy Manning, Stephen Keogh and Frank Murphy all came through UCC, all kindred spirits.

However, when Flannery failed his first-year exams, he realised he'd have to balance rugby with Economics and Geography. Still, the good times kept rolling, including a Triple Crown with the Irish Universities, and UCC beating Grenoble in the European Students' Cup final.

"We beat Toulouse in the semi-final in the first year over there and they had a fantastic team, with the likes of (Xavier) Garbajosa. There was a huge crowd and we won something like 45-29, and the rugby that was played was just unreal."

A chronic hamstring problem - not helped by an inability to say no to a game of rugby if it was going - sidelined him for this third year in UCC, possibly a mixed blessing in that he had time to get his degree.

When Flannery graduated, he'd been off the radar for the best part of 18 months and knew he had to make a bit of a leap up the ladder again.

"I had to decide whether to stick around and play with Shannon, and work my slowly back in, or go to Connacht. I'd known Gavin Duffy from Academy camps together and he told me there were good opportunities for hookers in Connacht. And my mother (Jane) and her family are from Galway, so there was a strong connection there."

Again, he has fond memories of his two years with Connacht, save for the cloud that hung over them toward the end of his second season there.

"We were monitoring our future through the press," he recalls. "Look, I could go on about this all day. There's a different attitude to Connacht down here. . . People slate Connacht, but I just point to all the players they keep bringing through."

And Flannery reels off team-mates who've gone on to play overseas or made their way into the Irish squad. "Johnny (O'Connor), Redser (Eoin Reddan), Gavin (Duffy), Bracks (Peter Bracken), Damien Browne, Ronnie McCormack, Rowen Frost."

He recalls himself and Reddan discussing what to do at the time. Because of Connacht's uncertain future, there was an impending exodus of 10 or more players.

"Then, once Munster came in my mind was made up. I never thought again about it, even when I was sitting on the bench, because at the time my mind was made up for me."

Connacht had made him a better player when he returned to Munster and Shannon for the start of the 2003-04 season, though at 25 he knew he'd still have to serve his time.

"I'm a realist, and coaches all come up with this argument that if there are two lads there of roughly equal ability, and one guy has more experience, 'I'm going to pick the guy with experience'. But where does that leave the guy without experience? The only way you're going to get experience is by playing. It's frustrating."

He recalls the start to this season. He went well in a couple of pre-season friendlies and started the first game at home to the Borders, last season's whipping boys. Munster won 9-8, but only after the introduction of Sheahan and Alan Quinlan for Flannery and Keogh.

The two young guns watched that endgame from the bench, as they did from the start the following week when Munster thrashed the Ospreys, the reigning champions. It didn't seem to matter that the Ospreys were less than full-strength, or that the Borders beat them three weeks later. At the time, perception was everything, and Flannery would have more splinters in his rear but for Sheahan's misfortune when damaging his neck in the European Cup opener against Sale.

"If Frankie hadn't got injured I probably wouldn't be where I am now. I'm not saying I'm made, but at least when Frankie comes back, I'll have hopefully put myself in a stronger position. I want to show what I can do in every game and make it as difficult a decision for Declan Kidney as I can. And now I have Denis Fogarty, who is a very good player, breathing down my neck, which is the way I want it."

Between Sheahan's yellow card and injury in Edgeley Park, Flannery had about 30 minutes on the bench, which was, he admits, invaluable grooming for his full debut at home to Castres the following week.

"If you sit on the bench and watch games all the time, you can build them (the opposition) up in your head. He's a big so-and-so or whatever. Then you go out on the field and you hit them, and they're just the same. They go down and they hurt, just like you.

"So I went out there and just put in as much work as I could, and because I felt I made a contribution it really set me up for the next week. I wasn't a bit nervous. I'd just played the best team in England and they were just the same as you and me, skin and bone."

The Castres game went well for him - plenty of accurate darts, strong in the scrum and, as his wont, plenty of ball carries and work around the pitch.

More than that, he enjoyed winning. "I like getting stuck into the opposition and when the Munster pack get on a roll, and they're all rolling forward, it's some feeling."

Before he knew it, he was a late addition to the Ireland squad in November, making a 69th-minute debut. That it all came so quickly was, he says, a blessing in many respects. It's given him a taste for it, but, you'd venture, scarcely whetted his appetite.

Every game lately is a pressure game, but that's been the way of things for Munster in recent years. "Sale work very confidently when they're in front. When they get ahead they can really start pinning you back

. . . We've just got to get among them from the start and not let up."

The Thomond Park factor is immense, but as he says himself, "They're not going to get out on the field and do anything for us. If it put point-one per cent doubt in Sale's minds then we'll capitalise on it, but we know ourselves it doesn't matter if it's Thomond Park or Coonagh, we've got to put in a massive performance."