Hero with a finger on the red pulse

Pool Five Wasps v Munster:The long-time Munster captain starts from the bench today but his presence will remain vital and his influence palpable. Gerry Thornleytalks to him

History will judge him to be one of the best captains ever to have graced Irish rugby, perhaps the best of the professional era. If it wasn't to be Mick Galwey, then it was fitting Anthony Foley was the man to lift the Heineken European Cup when Munster reached their holy grail on that day of May days in 2006.

Munster have eked out so many wonder victories from the tightest of situations, in large part because they made the right tactical calls or upped their collective intensity at key moments under the leadership of these men. Keith Wood isn't alone in describing Foley as the most intelligent he has ever played alongside. Bearing in mind Foley honed his leadership skills in the hard school of the AIL's halcyon days in the 1990s, you wonder how the next generation of captains will be groomed in the current era of collective leadership on the pitch, but that's a debate for another day.

And when it comes to this competition, no Irish player has played more games (79) or, amazingly for a number eight, scored more tries (23). Alas his influence has waned in the last year. He picked up a shoulder injury in the opening European Cup win away to Leicester and only inched his way back for the latter stages, coming on as a replacement in the win away to Bourgoin and defeat at home to Leicester in January.

This season has maintained the trend; he started the first five Magners Celtic League games but was reduced to bench duty last week and is again today. No less than for Lawrence Dallaglio, say, it is not a role that sits easily with such a warrior of the game, even someone who turned 34 two weeks ago.

"Being more or less on the periphery, playing Magners League and subbing in the Heineken, is something I'm not used to, to be honest. But when you've got the likes of Quinny, Leams and Wally (Alan Quinlan, Denis Leamy and David Wallace), it's a hard backrow to get back into.

"Being vice-captain is a job that needs doing but when everybody's back it's kind of a role that you don't need to push because they're doing jobs that are natural to them anyway."

For all that, no one has a finger on the Munster pulse quite like Foley.

Wasps' press releases this week have made much of the Red Army procuring only 3,000 of Munster's ticket allocations but this could well be doubled on the day, as Foley reasons: "I think they know there's no panic getting tickets so they're not busting their chops at the moment to try and get tickets, so they'll wander over and we have a good fan base in England, Wales and Scotland and they'll all march on Coventry, and we'll have four or five thousand at an away game, which is an achievement in itself in the circumstances."

They won't be quiet about it either and, as ever, the umbilical relationship between supporters and team will be an integral part of the emotion, intensity and above all honesty of effort Munster invariably bring to their European Cup matches.

"You can't put a price on our travelling support. We've been fortunate that we've had that for a number of years. It's something that we don't take for granted and we understand that there are certain things we need to bring to the game to make people keep following you," says Foley.

"It's about bringing ourselves to the game and making sure we represent the people we represent. It's family and friends, it's people that do care, people that you meet in the street, that wear the Munster jersey with pride. We're not only representing ourselves but we're representing a lot of people at home cheering us on who like their rugby and support it through us. It's important we don't let people down. I think if we can just bring ourselves to the game and give it 100 per cent people will respect that."

Nevertheless, one suspects the relatively slow sale of tickets among normally the best travelling supporters of any team in Europe is in part a reaction to the exorbitant and somewhat unrewarded cost of supporting Ireland in the World Cup, as well as a palpable hangover from that huge letdown. Foley is acutely aware of this.

"I think because of the hype that was around the World Cup and the expectations that were put in place that every sporting person in the country couldn't wait for the World Cup to kick off and then for it to be such an anti-climax hit hard, especially for the people that would have forked out a lot of money to go to France. Paris can be an especially expensive place to go and watch rugby. For supporters to go there would have hurt them in their pockets and it will have taken them a while to recover, both emotionally and financially, from that."

He is even more acutely aware that the hangover was most painfully felt by the players themselves.

"The boys that came back were a shadow of the boys that went out," he admits. "They were downbeat and it takes a bit of coaxing and a bit of craic and a bit of fun to get everybody back into sync and looking forward to playing rugby again and burying those nightmares. It's important that the boys get right back on the horse again and get back to playing the rugby we know they can because these players didn't show what they were capable of in the World Cup."

What Munster tap into come the European Cup can never be taken for granted, because it requires so much controlled, unrelenting emotional energy and mental focus, but they have built a well of the stuff over the last decade. So when you ask Foley what it is that gives him hope Munster can dip into the well once more, he says, "The competition we're entering. The memories that we have of the competition, the emotion it brings, the level that we know we need to reach. Sometimes you can get away from all that week-in, week-out but sometimes it can happen purely by entering a competition such as this.

"I know people say we should be the same for every game we play but unfortunately that's not the case. Playing this competition in Coventry against Wasps is a massive lift for anyone so the build-up will lead to that."

Drawing further from past experience, Foley says Munster know they can beat Wasps and Llanelli, and at least there will be no expectations of handy bonus-point wins, the type of games in which Munster have nearly tripped up previously.

No team in Pool Five is likely to go through unbeaten, there's unlikely to be a place in the last eight for the runners-up, there'll be twists and turns, and Foley can readily envisage it coming down to points difference.

"It's important that we go into every game determined to fight for every single point we can get out of it."

Under contract until next June, Foley has reached that point in a sportsperson's career where the future is a little unclear. "To be honest with you, I'm not really sure. The next month or two will probably help me decide what I'm going to do. It's not something I'm deciding on at the moment because I'm going to give it a shot between now and Christmas and see where that takes me and then make decisions after Christmas."

He still brings immense experience to the party and enjoys playing rugby as much as ever. Like any product of the amateur era, he talks of being paid for something he would gladly have done for nothing anyway. Eventually, you'd have thought, such astute leadership in the dressingroom and on the pitch would transfer to coaching.

He's started doing some coaching courses and helps Galwey out with Shannon on Tuesday nights, "just to get my hand in and see if I'm any good at this coaching lark, and that seems to be going okay.

"Maybe that's something I might look into in the future but there's no point in making decisions now. That will be something that will be done in the new year."

For the moment, lifting the European Cup 18 months ago is too recent a memory to look too far ahead. "Winning the Heineken Cup was the highlight of a lot of fellas' careers and to actually be captain on the day was a special moment for me and was something we're going to try and recreate. It was such a special occasion we want to get back there and see if we can do it again."

Numbers game

Position: Backrow

Club: Shannon

Province: Munster

School: St Munchin's College

Date of birth: October 30th, 1973

Height: 1.91m (6ft 3in)

Weight: 111kg (17st 7lb)

Official Munster caps: 172

Points scored: 115

Senior debut: v Edinburgh (h) October 1994.

Magners/Celtic League caps: 48

European Cup caps: 79

European Cup debut: v Swansea (h) November 1995

Ireland caps: 62

Ireland points: 25