Green cards for Flannery and O’Leary

MUNSTER and Irish hooker Jerry Flannery whose elbow injury ruled him out of the Lions tour to South Africa has received a boost from Irish coach Declan Kidney who has decided that he and Tomás O’Leary should spend time with the Churchill Cup squad in Colorado for a couple of weeks from next week.

Neither, of course, will be capable of participating, or indeed of doing any significant training but Kidney believes it will be to their benefit to be in the company of fellow professionals rather than toiling away by themselves at home.

Flannery described it as a good call, saying: “I could be back home in Limerick, feeling sorry for myself and allowing other people feel sorry for me.

“This way, I get to be amongst other players, training in whatever way is suitable and in the same environment that I would be in were the injury to have happened in the middle of the season.

“It certainly beats sitting at home and watching the Lions play matches when I would only be thinking that I could have been there.

“This will take my mind off things; hopefully everything will go well, I’m seeing the surgeon on June 2, then go out with the Churchill Cup squad and before I know it the lads will be home after the Lions tour preparing for the new season. It sounds good to me,” he added.

Meanwhile, Lions coach Ian McGeechan reckoned preparations this week have been “as good as it has ever been on any of

McGeechan toured with the Lions as a player in both 1974 and 1977 while this summer ranks as his fifth involvement on the coaching team.

“A lot of it is down to the players and their approach and attitude, which is why it has been such a good start. They have given us the start we needed.

“I would like to think I’ve done that at club level, and I am not going to change my approach to that in a Lions context.

“I want these players 100 per cent, or as near as we can possibly make it, when they play.”