“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.