Anthony Foley: The hard man who had a heart of gold

How will I remember Axel? I will look at that picture of him on the front of Monday’s Irish Examiner. It captured everything about him. There was this perception of him as being dour but that picture of him with the beaming smile was Axel for me.

I became Munster’s media manager in 2000 after meeting Jerry Holland and Declan Kidney, who invited me down to Musgrave Park to meet the squad. It was one of the most frightening experiences of my life.

I turned up in a suit and tie and after meeting with the likes of Peter Clohessy and Mick Galwey, I knew immediately I was overdressed. I remember Mick O’Driscoll rolling his eyes to the heavens as if to say, ‘who’s this langer?’ and I knew it was going to be a tough gig. I was from Leinster, and Leinster was hated with a vengeance.

Any opportunity to make my life difficult, in a playful manner, they took. Except for one guy. Axel.

He was always there, enjoying the craic at my expense but he wasn’t a ringleader in that respect. I spoke to him about those early days a long time afterwards and he said: “Well, I remember thinking, he might last until Christmas”. And I thought he was on my side.

But he was one of the exceptions to the rule, and there was a decency about him. From those early days I saw there was a softness about him that wasn’t always apparent.

I’ll always remember with affection our times together after Heineken Cup matches. We socialised together and though to my mind he was quite a shy man, he was never more comfortable than when among rugby people or, of course, with his incredibly tight-knit family.

There was a quiet dignity about him that was evidenced in how he handled the somewhat insensitive changeover to the new regime last season.

There was nothing complex about the guy. He loved his rugby and when he was made head coach he got the job he’d always wanted. There was a sense of fun about Axel too but there was also a sympathy for you if you were down and he commanded enormous respect within the squad in those years. People think of Paul O’Connell and Ronan O’Gara in those terms but he was right up there with them.

Before the squad left the hotel for a game, a designated player would speak; if that player was Axel, his words would have the hair standing up on the back of your neck. The Miracle Match against Gloucester at Thomond Park in January 2003 was a case in point. You actually felt sorry for Gloucester before they took the field. There was no stamping the ground or talk of how we need to score this or that number of tries or points; it was just we’re going to batter the daylights out of them.

Anthony was huge into respect but when one of the Gloucester players said in the press that he was really looking forward to playing at Thomond Park, that enraged him. The very idea that a team might consider looking forward to that? — you have to be joking. Axel wouldn’t countenance that and that was the nail in Gloucester’s coffin.

As an opposing player, if you were in the wrong place at the wrong time in the wrong jersey you were toast. To this day, no-one has scored more tries for Munster in Europe than Axel. Simon Zebo may catch his total but it just underlines his massive contribution to Munster, not least the hat-trick he scored against Biarritz in the 2001 Heineken Cup quarter-final.

As a coach he knew the game inside and out and he was phenomenal as a player, a genuinely hard man on the field. But the Axel I knew also had a heart of gold and that’s how I will remember him.

• Pat Geraghty was Munster media manager from 2000 until 2013.