‘I think it was a moment of realisation for a lot of us that we were a really good team’

Celebrating their Heineken Cup quarter-final victory over Stade Francais on April 15, 2000 in Thomond Park, were Munster’s Eddie Halvey, Mick Galwey, manager Brian O’Brien, Marcus Horan, John Hayes and Fergal O’Callaghan. Picture: Matt Browne/Sportsfile

It was a season that saw Munster ranked 66-1 Heineken Cup outsiders and treated with such disdain by Saracens that John Kelly remembers his team running out at Vicarage Road to the theme tune of American 60s ghoulish sitcom ‘The Munsters’.