Confident Quinlan ready for intense battle

HAVING trained with the Grand Slam squad over an eight week period, Alan Quinlan had a bird’s eye view of the team dynamics, and how they went from being simply colleagues to close friends in a short space of time.

However, he says it doesn’t mean that when buddies collide in the self-styled ‘Battle of Ireland’ tonight that close friendships will temper the physical exchanges or the intensity of this local dispute.

As a veteran of this inter-provincial rivalry that stretches back over a century, returning to your province to prepare to face your Ireland team-mates is not a new situation he has had to face – even if the friendships forged in Ireland camp this year are stronger than ever before.

Preparing to face his Ireland team-mates is something he likens to a time in Irish rugby when club rivalries — the Cork-Limerick one especially — were quite intense before players would then suddenly become blood brothers in a Munster shirt.

“There are no issues there with anybody in Leinster — everybody’s professional and you learn to deal with these type of situations over the years,” he explains. “You play with your country, come back and play against each other.

“We had it with our clubs before, we used to kick the s*** out of each other for our clubs and them come the following week and play with Munster. We’re used to it.”

He added: “We know each other inside out, and nowadays with the modern game and the amount of analysis that is done teams cancel each other out.

“I don’t think you’re going to see classic rugby, but you’re going to see a good intensity and certainly guys doing their best and pushing hard and trying to get a result.”

Quinlan, along with Keith Earls and Shane Jennings, were brought to Cardiff by Declan Kidney as cover ahead of their Grand Slam showdown with Wales last month. He admits that the comments of Rob Kearney in the Enfield meetings last Christmas probably gave the squad an extra ‘focus’ but, from his own personal perspective, he always performed as diligently for country as he did for Munster.

“It (Rob Kearney’s comments) came out but I think that can be put to bed now. I trained with the team for the eight weeks, you could see the desire in everyone’s eyes to gel together and work hard for each other. They were united and they got the result.

“It was no harm to have a focus on it and concentrate on trying to gel together as a group together and it worked for them. I don’t think it was ever true that people preferred to play for Munster than Ireland. From my own experience and from speaking to the other lads, everyone is really proud to play for their country.”

Now back in Munster camp, Quinlan, says the Grand Slam players are “bouncing around the place” as their season enters the business end column of their 08/09 campaign.

And while the next two games represent make-or-break encounters, the back-row forward says a win over his nearest rivals would be a huge boost to claiming league honours.

“Certainly they’re our closet rivals, it’ll give us a boost if we win but I wouldn’t say the league would be over. There are four games after that and anything can happen. If you look at the Premier League, you can see the way United slipped back and Liverpool are creeping up on them.

“We’re in a good position, we’re three points ahead. We’ll approach the game to try and win it and we’ll be confident going into it, and certainly it will kick us on another little bit if we can beat Leinster. The other side of it is if they beat us they could go a point or two points ahead of us.”

He added: “I think I said at the start of the season there are four points on offer and that’s all we’re focusing in on is trying to get a result. Next week against Ospreys is a different type of challenge. You don’t hide the fact that the Leinster game is a huge game, it’s a different Magners League game because it’s a local province, we know each other so well, but at the end of the day the points are on offer and both teams are trying to win the match and get those points. Next week is another big challenge for us against the Ospreys.”