RUGBY: JOHNNY WATTERSONon the trials endured by the Munster and Ireland hooker as he battles to be fit for the World Cup

THERE IS a weary tone in the voice of Jerry Flannery but the hint of a menacing sparkle remains in his eyes.

The Ireland hooker has talked himself out about injury. In the family bar; at squad sessions; to camera; over microphones; in his battle with his body this year victory at one stage looked to have been lost.

As tests of character go, Flannery’s has been one of knock backs, mystery and anxiety. Forsaking words, he rolls up his tracksuit bottom to reveal a smart scar along the side of a calf muscle.

Flannery injured his right calf in January playing against Ulster. He started back training and was called in to the Six Nations squad with hopes of playing Magners League in the middle of it and getting back towards grabbing his old Irish shirt.

He then tore his left calf training.

Undeterred, he rehabbed and came on for Munster against Toulon. Again he hobbled out of the game.

“I couldn’t see any light there. It was quite bleak for a couple of weeks,” he says.

“It’s just been very frustrating, you know? It’s the mental side of it more than anything. You feel you’re not contributing.”

The current road to recovery was a narrowing of possibilities. They thought it might have been related to his back but that idea gave way to a condition known as Compartment Syndrome, which involves increased pressure in a muscle compartment. It can lead to muscle and nerve damage and problems with blood flow

“I had surgery on my calf. They diagnosed me and I had bits and pieces cut out, just to examine it,” he says.

“It’s just the way it’s presented itself. You have the muscle and then you have the sheath around it called fascia. When someone exercises it, the blood goes into the muscle to give oxygen. As it expands, if the sheath is too tight it can restrict the muscle and it generally manifests itself with a dull pain and as you exercise it get worse and worse.

“But we were kind of running out of options so we went in and had a test. I tested positive for Compartment Syndrome so I had a procedure on March 28th, a fasciotomy, and I just started back on rehab then.”

Even the test was complicated by injury. He was required to run for 20 minutes to measure the pressure on his right calf. But he had torn his left calf and had to rehab that before he could even undertake the test, which was to measure pressure on the muscle before and after exercise.

The pressure was high, surgery the option.

The road to recovery took him north, often accompanying fullback Rob Kearney on trips to Belfast as Kearney recovered from a cartilage operation to his knee.

Stephen Ferris also rocked over to the sports Institute of Northern Ireland for rehabilitation.

“They have a special treadmill up there,” explains Flannery. “It’s like an anti-gravity treadmill. Generally when you come out of surgery, you can’t run straight away. The tissues are trying to adapt and they can’t tolerate your full weight. This supports your weight so you’re able to start running.

“Rob had had surgery on his knee and the cartilage on his knee responded really well to it. It’s a hard slog, you get up at six in the morning and drive to Belfast and then come back that day. It’s a hard slog but at least you feel you’re trying to make some sort of change.”

Caution remains in his voice but he has hopes of playing soon. In answering the blizzard of questions on his health he has come to understand that making it to a pitch has not always meant he would not break down. Doubt, apprehension, suspicion are not unfathomable emotions. But his faith is as strong as his medical team tell him it should be. He believes in them when they say it will tolerate full contact.

“The sooner I can play I can put that question to bed and then I’ll play two games a week, if you let me,” he says. “When you’re so far removed from playing you get a chance to see how much a massive game like the Leinster game at the end of the season means (Magners League final).

“For a lot of different reasons it was huge for us. But I saw how much it meant to other people, sitting around listening to my oul fella and oul fellas in the pub getting so riled up about it. I never take it for granted.”

Flannery plays like nothing is served up. And he has been such an intense and abrasive figure you can’t fail to hope those visceral qualities and his soldiering passion will bring this World Cup to within his grasp.

“When it’s your job you don’t realise how deep it goes for other people,” he says. “You think it just means that much to you.”