Jerry Flannery announced his retirement from rugby yesterday afternoon. In what was a raw and emotional interview, Jerry made his feelings clear on what lies ahead for him. Here is the interview in full. In it’s rawest form. Enjoy.
Hard decision to make?
It is obviously not something you do lightly but I have been struggling with it for a while now. I had the operation before the World Cup, I had a fasciotomy and I got through a couple of game in the build up to the World Cup and played the first game. I thought I was out of the woods at that stage and I was really relishing tagging another three of four years onto the end of my career.
When I broke down I came back and it hasn’t been coming around for me. Last season I was starting to get quite bitter, I broke down again during the Six Nations last year training with the lads and I found it very hard. I wasn’t getting too much return for the amount of effort I was putting into it. I was getting bitter. It thought I might have to retire. I was really worried that I’d spend 25 years of my life playing a game and end up retiring and being angry with it.
So when I got to the World Cup I was delighted and it was a really good experience. Then when I came home then after breaking down, I had Wally and Felix Jones on long term injuries I said I’d give it another go, and we had Dave O’Sullivan our new physio here, I said I had nothing to lose really. I have been working hard on it the last six months and I don’t really find it’s getting any better.
I started testing it again at Christmas: I went and saw a specialist in Germany in November. There was a build-up period before they started testing in December, and in late December I was thinking that this thing is not really working at all. You keep working at something but I didn’t want to get that stage where I got really bitter at rugby again. That’s why after talking with the medical staff they just said it doesn’t seem to be coming around. Unfortunately I have had to retire.
What now? Masters in Sports Performance?
Yeah, when I came back from the World Cup…to break down again there was obviously questions about what my future held. So I applied for the course. It didn’t start until late January and I had a fair bit of time, so if things came right for me I could continue as I am. For now I am just studying and I’ll keep training. The masters will finish in December.
I have a routine…I see some of the lads who come out and they lack routine. It is a difficult transition period when you retire because rugby is every single week, you know exactly where you need to be every hour of the day nearly. So to come out you can get a little bit lost, which would make it a little bit harder. But I am enjoying the college thing at the moment and it is relevant to me because it is sport.
Media work?
It is difficult to say what I really want to do. If you asked me honestly, I find it hard to find stuff that gets me as passionate as rugby. Obviously when you come out…I have developed a really good work ethic from rugby; rugby has though me a lot. So I am keen to try and put that into something else.
That’s what rugby has thought me: if you work hard at something you can get a result. It is trying to find something that you want to go at. Maybe you have to try little bits of everything first but at the moment I have got to keep studying, I can’t take the eye off the ball too much.
Tony Mc Gahan said you’d make a good coach?
I think it is too early for me to take over the role here. But I appreciate the sentiment.
I think, I look at some of the coaches I have worked with, I have learned so much from them. I have been lucky that they have all differed so much. You pick up bits and pieces from them all the time. I look at Declan Kidney’s man-management is incredible; I look at the work ethic that Tony McGahan has, I don’t think you will ever come across any coach that works as hard as him. He is a real knowledgeable guy. It is a 360-degree approach that he has to a sports organisation like Mnster.
The course I’m doing is basically sports performance. It is teaching you how to coach, teaching the peticology ???? of teaching people how to play and get across knowledge. It is interesting on that front, but I still have a long way to go.
I look at Axel and see how he has responded to it, and it is incredible. He has had the benefit of working with guys like Tony and Laurie Fisher and he has absolutely rocketed as a coach.
As I said rugby is something that gets me really passionate, so it is something that would interest me. But I feel you have got to pay your dues with whatever you are doing. If I want to go at something I want to be as best prepared because I want to give a good account of myself. So that’s why I am concentrating on the book for now.
Spoken to Declan Kidney?
I spoke to him a while back and he has been very supportive of me. All the way through my injuries Declan has been really, really good. I know him since I was 18, so we know each other fairly well. It is not just like he was a guy I was working with, he was dealing with me????
Highlights of your career?
There is obvious ones that would be for everyone, you could pick the Grand Slam or Munster’s first Heineken cup win. But I think what you miss the most…what I love about rugby is that you work so hard during the week and then you have that period at the weekend when you get tested, you play your game and then you sit there with your mates there afterwards in the dressing room and say ‘We did it’ or ‘What have we got to do to do better next week’. And I love that feeling: It is a real tangible work/reward kind of thing. That is something you have to work on going into the next phase of you life. Just chatting with some of the lads about it, if I make a mistake at training on Wednesday, the coaches come in and they’ll ball me out of it. It is in no uncertain terms because we are going to get tested again on Saturday and we’ll pay for it. But in the real world, if some one doesn’t do their job correctly and you come in and tear into them, it is not generally accepted as well. It is trying to tone things down a little bit, in college and work and stuff.
These are the things that I have been thinking about, the cross over.
Is it easier to make the decision now after WC and college? More at ease?
Absolutely. I went to the Irish games and I went to Ireland-Scotland game and I really enjoyed the game. Where the year before I would have been hateful and jealous the year before. If you ask any player, if you want to play and there is some on in your role, you want to be there. But I was able to say to myself, I have had my time. And what you start to realise is you get perspective. If you are not playing for Munster somebody else is, if you are not playing for Ireland somebody else is. Someone has to fill the jersey and when you get he chance it is what you do in it that counts.
Will you make a good Munster spectator?
I would have supported Munster before I played with them, but when you are playing with them you have a vested interest in who is playing hooker if you are not playing hooker, you want to get back in there. But I will massively support Muster from now on. A fear that I would always have had, that Munster has been such a special part of my life for so long, you wonder that when you step out of it, will it change, will the ethos and the culture in the club change. I’d be worried that maybe I’d be in the bar working away and some young hooker, some flash fella will come in. Munster might have lost 12 games on the trot and he is earning a pile of cash and is throwing 50s across the counter. And I am thing this f***ing little pr***k. but I see the young lads coming through in Munster the likes of Peter O’Mahony, Sherry and Murray and they just have an incredible work ethic and they just love playing for Munster. It makes you feel that when you step back form it that it will still be the club you love.
Difficult when people asking about comeback?
When you are coming to the very end and you know the injury is not getting any better and you have not made this announcement, it is very, very hard. Being honest is a big part of being successful in rugby: you have to be honest all the time. And the last few weeks, meeting people after the Scottish game, walking away they are saying ‘We need you back’. And you say ‘Hopefully soon’, but I am just bullshitting you, I am not, but in general all the other times I would have believed I was going to come back. But as frustrating as it gets, if people don’t ask you are you going to come back, it is not a good sign because the don’t give a shit about you. They don’t rate you. If anyone asks you, it gets a little bit difficult, but you learn to say it id coming along. But towards the end when you don’t think it is getting any better I would have loved to have told them that my leg hasn’t gotten any better. Otherwise you have to put a positive tint on it because they obviously give a shit.
Day before the Australia match, spoke to players?
You can take a moment that just happened and if you try to recreate it is just artificial. If Tony or Axel asked me to come in and turn on the waterworks and give out the jerseys it is fake, it is not real. The thing with Declan when he asked me to do it, I genuinely didn’t think about it, I said this was a big honour and definitely I’ll do it. I went off and I had literally got back form the gym and the meeting was on. I said what will I do, I said I would give out the jerseys, look every guy in the eye and wish them all the best. It is only when you are doing that that you realise I am not going to play: it hits you then because that is a process that you were part of. I think that when I came back from New Zealand and I was thinking that every club in Limerick will be asking me to come down before their county final to give out the jerseys. But that is what I was thinking. And I have get a few calls, the lads are playing absolute garbage, we need you to come out and give out the jerseys. It is not going to make that much of a jerseys.
I think there is a place for all that and I have talked with a few people before. I was asked to go up and speak at the Irish Sports Council camp and they had a lot of coaches there. Fellas going to the Olympics and potential coaches for the future. I was asked to go up and give a talk on what an athlete wants from his coach. And I found it brilliant, I really enjoyed it because you have people on the same wavelength, people that are so keen to get better. You get to say, I am not an expert, but this is what I always wanted.
Do you see a role in the future in Munster?
Munster has been a huge part of my life any you can almost have it that your identity is engrained with Munster. You cam get to a stage when you finish that you want to go and prove you can be successful without Munster, but if Munster is what is right for you there is no point ion fighting that. I don’t want o be one of those sad ex-players who leave but they are always hanging around training. You just move on. You have had your time in the jersey and you have done what you can there. You go and up-skill yourself. If in the future that me coming back together Munster for Munster then I would love to be part of it because there is nothing i love more than it. But I am not going to hang around Munster and say is there any chance of a job, or can I come around and go on some of the away trips, to just hang around and get my face on the telly: that’s bullshit. That’s no good for anyone, that’s just pandering and not letting go. I won’t ever refer to myself as an ex-professional rugby player, that’s garbage. You played rugby, you move on and do something else. You move on and do something else, so effectively I am a student now.
You are Jerry Flannery student now?
Yeah and if I am back with Munster some day in t eh future then brilliant because I love it, but it is almost like a challenge to go away and do something else. But whatever you do you want to do it well so you have to go away and give it time to do it well.
It is not so dramatic as that I won’t ever see them. I meet the lads ever single day, there is no difference there. I could have just saw out the rest of my contract – I am contracted to the end of the season – but I think it is important: you spend 10 or 12 year playing and building up respect from your peers. Maybe this is me, but I would judge people who I know are finishing up at the end of the season on what they are doing for the last two months of their career. If they are coming in swinging the lead, you’d say why are you doing that. I never wanted to be a guy who was just hanging around.
When I wasn’t playing I was 100 percent in what I was doing. I’d be in the gym I was 100 percent competing with everyone, if I was lineout throwing it was 100 percent all the time. For instance you spoke about coming back to Munster again, if you were to work for ten years and then for the last 6 months you start swinging the lead and the young fellas come in and see you and say I don’t really respect that guy. And then how do you expect to come back in to these guys and coach them. I wasn’t doing that on the basis of coaching, that is just the way I want to represent myself. I can’t contribute on the field anymore so that is what I called it a day.
Fans expectations OTT?
That’s not supporters; that comes from within Munster. Form the players, that is how where have set the standards. The standards are high and it is good that the supporters reinforce them because it just feeds back into them as well. 99 percent of the time it is always a positive pressure. When it happens to you for a first time that is where you really learn it. In 2006 we had Sale and they were top of the league and they came over with Chabal and had given us a fairly good beating when we played them over in Manchester. But when we were walking around the city all the supporters were going you are going to win it and we need four tries to get a home quarter. These people are either delusional or they genuinely believe it. We believed we could do it and that put us in such a good frame and that is what Thomond Park is such a hard place to play. Because people never write Munster off. When Munster fans start thing that a play-off or third or fourth is good enough for us in a Rabo Direct or maybe just a HC semi-final, that is when we will start to lose that special ethos within the club and the supporters.
