“I don’t think that just having played for Munster gives you any sort of insight. You have to prepare for the games.”
Rugby players often find it hard, initially, to criticise their former teams, and teammates, when they retire and take up punditry or commentating duties. The likes of Brian O’Driscoll and Stephen Ferris have admitted as such but say they gradually settled into the role.
More often than not, a bit of time and distance helps.
Alan Quinlan has made a good fist of the media work since he retired from the game in 2011. The former Munster and Ireland forward is currently spreading his workload across, to name a few, Newstalk, The Irish Independent and Sky Sports.
Quinlan recently took issue with the manner of Munster’s performance in their 36-19 away victory over Zebre in the Guinness PRO14. Some of the comments he made about the game, on Sky and Newstalk, found their way back to Munster forwards coach Jerry Flannery and he was far from happy.
Flannery joined The Hard Yards podcast ahead of Munster’s back-to-back Champions Cup ties with Leicester Tigers and [from 58:00 below] launched into a full-blown riposte of Quinlan’s criticisms. It is compelling stuff.
In full, here are Flannery’s comments:
“If you’re playing a sport, criticism is going to come and you take it from the right people. Your coaches are going to give you constructive criticism to make you a better player. As a player, what you want from that is that the coach has gone and put work in – that he has done the analysis and he’s thought about this and put work into it before he passes it on. Players with a growth mind-set will take it on-board to become better players.
“For me, as a coach, I know there’s going to be criticism of the team and that’s it, because you rarely ever play the perfect game. So you’ve got to be able to take that. I suppose when people hear someone like Alan Quinlan coming out and criticising how we’re going, if I look at it like Alan Quinlan played some great games for Munster, people will take on board that if Alan is speaking on Munster.
“Most people watch a game to be entertained and expect the co-comms – the guy that is doing commentary with [the main commentator] – to do a bit of analysis. But I don’t think that just having played for Munster gives you any sort of insight. You actually have to prepare for the games.
“When I don’t feel like people have prepared properly for the games and they’re doing it last-minute, you have to look at it from the point of view that we spent a lot of time preparing and working hard. We had a lot of young players who were playing in that match. We were missing two international loose-heads, an international hooker, and international tight-head, Gerbrandt Grobler, Dave O’Callaghan, Peter O’Mahony – a Lions captain, Tommy O’Donnell – an international 7, CJ Stander – Lions 8, Conor Murray – Lions 9, Ian Keatley – Irish 10, Tyler Bleyendaal, Andy Conway – another Irish international, Jaco Taute – Springbok international, Chris Farrell – Irish international at 13, Dan Goggin – another good, young player…
“We were missing this amount of players and you have to look at things in context of the game. I don’t know whether he had done any preparation for it. I don’t think he had. It didn’t seem like he had because when people relayed the comments back to me, I just went, ‘This doesn’t make sense’.
“It’s that, I suppose, people will watch it and say, ‘Well Alan Quinlan must know what’s going on at Munster because he played for them’ but Alan Quinlan has absolutely no idea what’s going on at Munster. Nothing. He hasn’t got an iota of what we do in here.
“I understand that people will come out and give their opinion but their opinion should be based on something. If it’s not based on preparation, well then they’re actually not doing their job and they should not be getting paid for it, in my opinion. Like, if I don’t do my work as a coach I’m going to get sacked. I can still get sacked, even if I do my work and results don’t go my way and if I can’t get my message across to the players… or it’s even the wrong message. And I’m happy with that but I think there should be a level of accountability for other people out there.
“If, for instance, Sky think that it’s deemed credible that if someone has just played for a club that they can go out and just give their opinion without doing any work, well, they’re kind of cheating the viewers. People are paying for their subscription to watch it and they want to get some sort of analysis or… if they’re not getting it then there is a breakdown there.
“But, look, Quinny was very good on Ireland’s Fittest Family. He’s good at that stuff.”
Host Andy McGeady noted that some of Quinlan’s comments may have been taken out of context and extended an invite for him to come on the show at any stage.
Flannery insisted he was not trying to have a go at his former Munster and Ireland teammate. He added:
“It’s more that, as Alan noted himself, he came in last minute for the Zebre game – when it was put to him. Something happened with Ieaun Evans, he couldn’t do it, and he came in last minute.
“I think Quinny should be able to emphatise with the players. When there’s lads there that have worked so hard, that you at least have to do… you either temper your comments and look at it [the match] in context or say, ‘Jesus, this is a Zebre team that went and beat Ulster at home’.
“They actually beat Connacht the week after we scored five tries on them. So you just look at it in context.
“Look, sometimes it can be irritating when guys that were part of the club are doing that, you know. I don’t know whether they see it as sort of an attachment to their time at the club or don’t want to see the club move forward because then they’re not seen in the same standing that they might have been… but that’s a poor mind-set to have, for my opinion.”
Some strong words from Flannery on a matter he has thought long and hard about.
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