Flannery can only wait as career hangs in balance

JERRY FLANNERY accepts that the outcome of a recent visit to an eminent German specialist will decide whether he will ever be able to resume his rugby career.

The injury-dogged, 41-times capped hooker acknowledges the work he is doing on the recommendation of German expert Dr Muller Wohlfahrt almost certainly represents the last chance saloon.

Missing out on the Lions tour to South Africa in 2009 because of a dislocated elbow was bad enough but ever since a number of calf muscle injuries have marred Flannery’s career. Surgery and all imaginable kinds of treatment were tried but setback followed setback. And yet, when he came through the four pre-World Cup warm-up matches in August, it looked as if he had at last turned the corner.

“I went out to New Zealand feeling really good but the calf locked up the week before the American game and playing that day [as a replacement], it was really, really painful,” he said. “I told our doctor, Eanna Falvey, and he pulled me out of training for the first session before the Australian game and told me to take an extra bit of rest. Realistically, to be involved in that game, I had to train the next day and I did so. It felt better but it just tore.

“Mentally, the injuries have been very hard, especially at pre-season. You see the lads doing this crazy fitness stuff, getting sick and then high-fiving each other and the bond being built and I’m just there on the sideline doing some lousy exercise with my calf. I was getting a bit angry, a bit frustrated, a bit bitter last year and I didn’t want to be like that.

“But I got to the World Cup and had a brilliant time. The minute I got back on the field, even just training, this was what I’d been missing, just being out with the lads training.”

He expects to be back running in the very near future, confident that Dr Wohlfahrt in Munich has helped put him firmly on the road to recovery.

Flannery said: “He told me, ‘you have a disc pressing on a nerve in your back’. What’s happening is that the calf is constantly stimulated from the nerve in your back being touched, so when you go to exercise the calf is exhausted, it is completely fatigued, it is not working. And that explained an awful lot.

“The idea is to try and offload the disc on my back. I tapered my training, [tried to] improve my posture and strengthen up my hamstrings and glutes to take pressure off the calf.

“I just have to be patient, it’s not easy but I’m getting used to it.”

Flannery came in for a considerable amount of praise for the manner in which he accepted his World Cup was over that fateful September week in Auckland, not least when giving a from-the-heart pep talk to the team in the hours leading up to the win over the Wallabies.

“I had a lot of perspective over there,” he mused. “I’ll be honest, though. We went out after the game and had a few drinks and when I woke up, the lads had all flown off to Taupo. God, was it depressing … I had to fly home to Ireland for 24 hours on my own dying with a hangover and wondering what was going to happen.

“But everyone at Munster has been so good to me … [coach] Tony McGahan gave me time to get my head straight, the physios and doctors have been brilliant.”