“My gear bag was in the bus and that was 10 minutes away...”

FEDERICO Puciariello has been able to pack down in all three front-row positions since he was a youngster back in his native Rosario in Argentina.

Without that versatility, Munster’s interest in this season’s Heineken Cup might very well be at an end because it was his intervention at a crucial moment in the quarter-final against Gloucester that could well have prevented a try or even a penalty try.

Few need reminding of how he propped up the Munster pack — literally — at a stage of the first half when Gloucester believed a makeshift scrummaging unit, deprived of Marcus Horan just before the kick-off, was there for the taking. And yet, he really should have been watching the action from the Kingsholm grandstand.

“I went over as a No 23 in case someone got injured”, he recalled. “The team was settled and there was no problem with Marcus’s back and Tony Buckley was sub. I had played for Gloucester before and I was outside the changing room joking with this old friend, a security guy who had worked in the club for the last 30 years.

“Just before the game, I was told, you have to come in here because Marcus was injured. I couldn’t believe it because I wasn’t even watching the warm-up and was getting ready to take my place to watch the game. Tom Comyns, the speed coach, and Jerry Holland, the manager, told me that Marcus can’t make it and you have to come in.

“So I had to change in a rush. But my bag was in the bus and that was 10 minutes away. That was my fault because I was supposed to have the bag there but I had left it in the bus because everyone was fine. In the morning, there was no sickness, no fever, nothing like that.

“It was a very unusual situation and the first time that happened in my whole career. I never imagined this could happen. There I am in my suit and Declan told me to go and warm up in the in goal area with Tom Comyns. You can imagine it wasn’t a very relaxed situation.

“The night before the game, I was in the house of Carlos Nieto [the Gloucester and Italian prop]. He’s a good friend of mine from Argentina, from Salta, a province up in the north of country and he also played with me in Italy when I was with Parma. So we are very good friends. We were talking about his life, he had a new kid, and he was worried about the game. Normal stuff. I have a coffee with him and he brings me back to the hotel. And, of course, when I go on the pitch, there he is at tight head, waiting for me. I really respect him, a great scrummager and a very good player.

“I was so relaxed. I played like I was in the back garden of my house. I told myself I will play this man like I know how to play. Simple. I go in there and get under him and try to put pressure on. Nothing amazing, really. It might have looked like that because of the situation. Imagine it. After that scrum, I say to Nieto, ‘how are you’, and he says to me, ‘you bastard’.

“I was sorry as well for Tony Buckley that he had to come off the field in that situation. It was difficult for him because he’s a tight head and it’s so difficult to transform a tight head to a loose head, especially when you’re that size.”