Frustrated Flannery ready to return after injury nightmare

MUNSTER and Ireland hooker Jerry Flannery is hopeful of a return to training with the province next week.

Flannery has been battling what appeared to be a calf injury, though it has since proven more difficult to diagnose.

“I’m very positive,” says Flannery. “I’m close, and I hope to be back on December 13.

“There have been a lot of different diagnoses, a lot of different treatments. I’ll try one, that doesn’t work, and then I’ll go back to another and that’ll contradict the previous treatment. It can be very confusing.

“It’s been a very difficult injury for them to diagnose. When it first happened I thought ‘this is a calf injury’ simple enough, but the fact it wouldn’t clear up showed it was bigger than that.”

Flannery is now trying to build his stamina before returning to action.

“I’m doing a running programme now, trying to build stamina and endurance in the calf.

“I run with Dr Garret Coughlan, who is a 5,000 metre runner as well, and he’s put me through my paces, trying to get me to work the calf in different ways. Looking at how I’ve broken down, it’s not that I can’t get up to 100% intensity – I can – but the calf seems to break down when the intensity isn’t that high. So it could be an endurance thing.

“I’ve spent four weeks of doing dedicated running, and hopefully from December 13, I can get back in training with Munster and get some rugby in.”

The Limerick native admitted it had been frustrating to watch the recent November internationals.

“Mentally it’s very hard to watch games when you’re injured. You want the team to win, without doubt you want to be part of a winning team, but you don’t want the guy in your position to play awesome. You just feel you really want to be out there instead. Particularly when you reach your thirties, every month that you’re not playing is giving someone else a chance to stake a claim.

” So it’s frustrating, but I’ve been injured for so long that I’ve had to bite the bullet and stop picking a particular game to come back for and just make sure the injury’s 100% cleared up.”