Payne: sideline strain every bit as intense

MUNSTER team manager and former player Shaun Payne admits matchdays can be torture, and he often wishes he was back on the pitch to allow him release some of the nervous tension that automatically occurs during big games.

Payne might look the picture of calm, but when Munster take on Northampton in tomorrow’s Heineken Cup quarter-final at Thomond Park, he will be going through his own hell.

It will be a different type of pressure to when he was a player, but no less taxing, he says. “When I was playing, I would always get a lot more nervous before a game. Those nerves would centre on a worry about my personal performance. It got especially bad for the bigger games; sometimes the nerves would start three days out and build up right to the moments before the game.