Flannery ready to front up

JERRY FLANNERY has backed Munster’s often under-fire front row to come up trumps in Saturday’s Heineken Cup clash with Northampton.

Flannery helped steady the ship during last week’s Magners League clash with arch-rivals Leinster, and though bitterly disappointed with the single-point defeat he was pleased with the Munster set piece.

Munster coach Tony McGahan has set aside significant time for scrum practice to prepare for Northampton’s Euan Murray, Dylan Hartley and, probably, Tongan Soane Tongauiha.

Flannery, back from a six- week suspension, is confident he, Marcus Horan and John Hayes will be up to the task.

“It’s not as if we have a youngster lining up as a prop for a big game for the first time. Much of this has been about us getting together and working as a unit for a while.

“I mean if you look at what happened this season, it has been a bit disjointed. Marcus was out for a long time, I’ve been missing at various stages, John had a suspension and then there was a big break for the autumn internationals. I’m not making excuses but we’ve been together now for a while, we’ve been doing a lot more work together and I have full confidence in our pack.”

That challenge, he acknowledged, will come in a different form from a Northampton team playing at the top of their form: fresh from winning the Anglo Welsh LV Cup – securing an automatic qualification for next season’s Heineken Cup – the club is also challenging for the Guinness Premiership title.

Flannery reckons everything should be rosy in the Northampton camp right now – he’s well aware that Munster were fortunate to have escaped with victory from an earlier pool game at Thomond Park. Northampton might have failed on January 22 but they showed enough to suggest they won’t be intimidated by a second visit.

“I wouldn’t expect them to be overawed. They’re a quality side with lots of experience throughout the team and given the players they have I’m sure they will come over here expecting to win the game.

“They’ll look back to the previous experience, will come here full of beans and confidence and it will be our responsibility to step up and try to get a result for Munster.”

Flannery’s return was marked with frustration when Munster lost to Leinster.

“It was a bitter disappointment for the squad and personally because I had been targeting that game for six weeks. It was really hard to take but you have to give all credit to Leinster – they were the better team and they played smarter rugby.”

Flannery has been in these situations before and recognises that the intensity and physicality of that game could have beneficial effects for Munster. He insists there’ll be no sense of doom and gloom in the build up to Saturday.

“It would obviously have been better to be going into this weekend had we beaten Leinster, but in a sense form has nothing to do with it. It’s a quarter-final, there are no bonus points to be had at this stage so it’s just about scoring more points than the opposition.

“It’s up to us to take the positives from last week and turn it around for our benefit. From a team perspective there was a lot of intensity to the way we played, we worked hard, our set piece functioned well and on a personal level I feel I will benefit from participating in such a tough match.

“Apart from the result, it was good preparation for a Heineken Cup game where we get one chance and one chance only.”