Anthony Foley: Saturday will be very sad, but a day to cherish

There will not be a greater Munster man in our life time than Axel.

When I heard the news about him on Sunday it was a shock. I was on the way back from Gatwick to Cheltenham with the rest of the Gloucester team and it came up on somebody’s Twitter feed.

We just couldn’t believe it at first. There was a feeling of tragedy all round.

In many ways, Axel was a larger than life figure. For me, as a new kid on the block at Munster, it was great because he had a unique insight and understanding into what made the club great.

At the time I started there, Munster had been through their great period for five or six years and he was at the heart and soul of that.

Axel knew what made people tick and how to try and get the best out of a group of people, so he was wonderful for me.

I liked him because he was quietly confident. He would always be understated, he would never push an opinion, but if you asked him something you knew what you got was of enormous value.

In the early days of his coaching he quietly went about his business. Coaching is very different from playing and I think he grew in confidence. Axel knew he had the knowledge, but coaching is a different ball game.

But the the more he did it, the more he was able to get his message across. He was a very good defence coach in my time there and became a very good forwards coach.

A lot of coaches are students of the game as players and Axel was certainly that. For that reason, I respected his knowledge and his store of it was amazingly helpful.

He had lots of great little ideas around line outs, set-plays and what we should do off mauls. He just knew all the little tricks of the trade about how you can hold someone in and create space.

All those really intricate details of how to be effective in the tight areas of the game, Axel had them up his sleeve. It was something I learned from him because he just knew perfectly how to be cute and create opportunities out of nothing.

After working with me, I always knew Axel would eventually be my successor. There had been an understanding from the beginning of my time that it was his role in life to lead Munster through some more great periods - and that definitely would have been his future.

He had a couple of tough years, but that’s coaching, everybody has that. Axel would have learned a huge amount in the last few years and he would have learned a huge amount off Rassie over the next few too. He would have bounced back an even stronger and better coach for the experience.

I always thought when I met Axel that he would coach Munster, not just because he was a Munster man, but because he had a great capacity to get the best out of people.

Axel had an amazing knack on any occasion, particularly around rugby, to say the right thing at the right time. He had an unbelievable feel for situations and what was needed to be said. He had a great capacity, in a rugby sense, to get the emotional response that you needed from a group of players.

That is a skill which cannot be learned, but Axel just had it.

To have a real feel for the playing environment and a great understanding of the game itself, those two factors combined mean that you have a great chance of succeeding in the coaching game, and it is just so disappointing that we won’t see that happen for Axel.

He would have certainly coached Ireland one day.

I have no doubt this weekend will be a unifying experience. I think like all various communities, when one of your own goes - who is probably not supposed to go - it’s a very uniting experience.

The players will be brought together and you can guarantee you will get an incredibly emotional performance from them. On any given day that can be the difference, as I think it will be this weekend.

Inside Thomond Park it will be one of the great atmospheres. There have been some unbelievable occasions there, but this is a whole different experience.

For the 25,000 there it will be a moment of humanity and a chance to pay homage to what Axel has done in our life time, not only for the organisation but the community.

It will be a very, very sad day. But also one to cherish.”

**Laurie Fisher was former forwards coach under Tony McGahan with Munster from 2008-2011.