Fla Is Back & Ready To Go

Catching up with former Munster hooker Jerry Flannery, who following the completion of a Masters in Sports Performance and work placement in Premiership outfit Arsenal, re-joins the province as Scrum Coach.

Having received an offer to return from Head Coach Anthony Foley, the Limerick-man took little time in deciding that a return to the province was the right move for him.

“I was delighted to be asked, especially with the team that Axel has put together in Brian Walsh, Ian Costello and Mick O’Driscoll, all lads who I was familiar with already. It’s obviously going to be a bit of a difficult transition for me as I played with some of these lads, but from my experience so far the coaching staff have been excellent.

Jerry talks us through his new role as Scrum Coach.

“The main thing is analysis and working with players on their individual responsibilities in the scrum – getting them to learn the best body positions and to get into those consistently and effectively. I also look at the coordinating of the scrum and put some markers in place for benchmarks and talent ID."

With 94 Munster caps and 41 Ireland caps to his name, Jerry went on to tell us why his break from rugby and experience with Arsenal was so beneficial to him.

“So much of your identity becomes engrained with your job and the club that you are playing with, that it’s good to take a break from it and see that you can enjoy and get fulfilment from something else. Having gotten a good work ethic from rugby I was able to apply it to football.

“They run a very tight ship over there and the experience was amazing. A lot of the stuff I learnt may not be applicable with the Senior squad, as much of what they look at is soccer as an early specialisation sport where players have to come though at a young age, whereas in Munster we have a bit more time as players need to physically mature before they can step on to a field with senior players. That’s not as much the case in football.

“However I can take a lot from their talent ID programmes which are very strong.”

As Jerry was the man behind Arsenal players putting on Munster jerseys (see below) and tweeting their support for the province, can we look forward to seeing them at a game in Thomond Park?

“I’m not lying when I tell you that a couple of the lads over there have turned into hard-core Munster fans, so we’ll see, you never know.”

Arsenal stars Lukas Podolski, Santi Cazorla and Mesut Ozil pledging their support for Munster in December 2013.