Gerry Thornleyrelives the key moments from last Saturday's famous victory with some of the men involved

COMING UP to last Saturday's final, people kept telling Jerry Flannery the experience of 2006 would be helpful. But he almost found it a hindrance. Having experienced the reality he could not stop dreaming of repeating it.

"It was as if I knew what was to lose more than anything else and it played on my mind a bit more. But I was just so confident going into the game.

"All night I had trouble sleeping. Myself and Ian Dowling roomed together. He'd get up. Then I'd get up, and I'd say, 'The feeling is awesome, man. I just can't stop thinking about us winning the Cup.'

"Usually when you have these positive feelings it's good but I was afraid that I was focusing on the result rather than the process. But I couldn't see us losing.

"Our form had been kinda patchy but I think that everyone realised that if we put in a really good two weeks, got the intensity up in training and our standards up, it would lead to a big performance, and we all rowed in."

Patience had been one of the buzzwords in training, both with the ball and in defence, with potential Toulouse threats everywhere.

"We needed to make sure we kept turning up, kept on making them play ruck ball; we couldn't give them offloads," says Tony McGahan, defence-cum-backs coach. "So basically the key word was patience, both in attack and defence, and control the tempo."

All was underlined at the team meeting on Friday evening, which McGahan and players alike say was far less emotional than in 2006.

"There was a realisation that with the crowd's support and the occasion, there would be plenty of emotion on the day anyway."

In contrast to Flannery, Denis Hurley was in the middle of exams when Munster played Biarritz in the 2006 final and watched the match in a pub along with a Tipperary contingent including Ed Leamy.

"Surprisingly enough, I got a decent-enough night's sleep; about seven or eight hours solid. I know a couple of the lads had awful trouble sleeping. But I was careful not to get overly anxious, just keep it a bit level-headed."

09.30Breakfast. A moveable feast. Hurley shared with Doug Howlett, and the two of them were among the earlier risers, emerging for breakfast at around 8.30am.

"A bit over-eager all right, but I suppose that's to be expected. Once you wake up on the morning it's hard to go back asleep again."

For David Wallace, 5pm is his ideal kick-off time, allowing him to rise later.

"I found it a lot more relaxed this time around than previous years. Why I don't know, because normally I get quite nervous."

12.45Referee's Report, followed by the the forwards going through lineout calls in the Vale of Glamorgan's indoor hall, which was helpful given the closed stadium roof.

"There were a few mistakes from guys who wouldn't normally make mistakes," says Wallace. "Everyone was a bit jittery all right. But it was okay."

The backs, including the replacements, walked through some attacking and defensive plays. "It's just to make sure people are comfortable with what we're doing and to refresh them," says McGahan.

1.30Pre-match lunch. A compulsory feast. The usual intake of mostly chicken, pasta and vegetables.

Hurley: "You'd have butterflies in the stomach but if you don't have a good intake I tell you by the second half of the game you're starting to run low on energy."

Hurley's father, Gerry, was the reserve Munster hooker when they beat the All Blacks in 1978, and he receives a text from him before every game. "Simple as 'Just enjoy it and have a cut'. That's more or less his message."

The players had final rub-downs, applied strapping and relaxed before the team meeting at 3.05. Kidney, despite himself, became a little emotional at the end of the meeting. Paul O'Connell spoke about "going to the well" one more time.

"He kept using this phrase all week and for the day, that we had to dig deep into our resources and go to the well, or whatever. He robbed it off one of my friends, he was telling me," laughs Wallace.

O'Connell's leadership has shone through in the knock-out stages, never more so than in the final week and in the game itself.

"He's always had that in him," says Wallace. "You could see he was a born leader. Maybe when he was younger there were things he needed to work on, but he's done that. Paul works on every part of his game and he's really a brilliant leader now."

3.15Depart Hotel, arriving at the Millennium Stadium at about 3.50.

"The day just seemed to drag," says Flannery. "It really dragged. I was just looking forward to it so much I just couldn't wait for the game. Coming in on the bus at first I thought, 'there's not that many here', but then when we got closer to the ground, the streets were just awash with red. I saw a few of my mates . . . drinking cans outside the castle."

Hurley: "It was pretty cool to be involved in that, to see the amount of Doug Howlett wigs around the place."

Peter Stringer had tried to warn Hurley what it would be like. "When we neared the ground they just poured out onto the streets from the pubs, and I'd say they were 90 per cent Munster jerseys."

4.35Warm -up. So many memories, so many moments to cherish, and Flannery was still in ultra-positive mode.

"Every time you look around it's a moment, because it's a final. I was looking up into the crowd before the game and just imaging what it was going to be like at the final whistle."

Even during the warm-up, Hurley felt he daren't look up at the hordes of Munster fans in the stand. "I kept my eyes down at ground level. I'm a huge Munster fan and I know what it means to people and when you have the opportunity to play for them and represent them you always have that fear that you might let them down. That fear is good at the same time. They're the people that drive you on."

5.002008 Heineken Cup final. McGahan confirms the gameplan centred on selective use of the backs, after first utilising forward target runners to take the ball up hard and clear it out, before moving it to Rua Tipoki and Lifeimi Mafi in the midfield channels.

"We needed to get back to what we do best, and that's very, very direct, and be able to pick our targets with a group of forwards. We had to use the skill that we had in the backs and I thought it worked pretty well for us."

In defence, the emphasis was on flooding the offloading channels. McGahan wasn't too happy Jean-Baptiste Elissalde had one penalty and two drop-goal efforts in the first 25 minutes, as Toulouse sought to build up a lead and make Munster play catch-up, but beyond that Munster defended very well.

"It stood us in good stead for the rest of the game, to be honest. They threw everything at us and I thought their body language was a little despondent when they only scored three points."

Nor was he upset to see Thierry Dusautoir, who had been putting in some monster hits, depart injured from what had become an earth-shuddering contest, to be replaced by the pacey but lighter Yannick Nyanga.

"He (Dusautoir) is a real workhorse, and he thrives on that sort of contact. The backrow battle was an especially hard one all day. You could really see Alan and Denis and David take it up another notch then."

"I knew they (Toulouse) were going to be very good and prepared myself for that," says Flannery. "The defence is something the players take ownership of. We're well coached in the system but the players have all bought into it and standards are kind of player-driven. If someone makes a mistake in training everyone gets on his back. If standards are high, when you get to the games you've got confidence in it then."

Fullback or wing can be the hardest position to get into a game. It can take a while for them to even receive a touch of the ball. Hurley was helped by O'Gara's crosskick to Howlett for Hurley to link with him.

"When you're playing fullback you can judge the game on how many tackles you make, and I think I only made one tackle in the whole game. That just means what was happening in front of me was spot on."

That said, Hurley was on the receiving end of a fair old aerial bombardment from Elissalde. The up-and-unders were consistently short, always in front of Hurley, brilliantly chased by Yannick Jauzion yet mostly gained only 15 or 20 metres, without any real consequence in the final analysis.

"It didn't make anything easy for me at all. I think they had their homework done and they knew how to play me; they didn't want to give me time on the ball. They were contestable kicks. Jauzion, with the size of him, is a great man for taking balls from the air as well. It was a bit difficult with the ceiling. That's the first time I've played in the Millennium Stadium so it's a bit off-putting sometimes. It's a funny flight of the ball. When you're getting pressure balls like those and Jauzion coming at you as well, you're hit-and-hope sometimes that you'll come away with the ball."

5.33Denis Leamy's try. "I knew it would come, I knew we would score against them," says Flannery. "I could feel them tiring all the way through the game, especially in the scrums. After 20 minutes I said, 'these guys aren't going to live with us.' I haven't seen the game yet and I don't know how it looked, but I could feel that little bit of tiredness. And then you know you've got an edge on them."

Half-time: Munster 10 Toulouse 6.

"I wanted half-time to go as quick as it could because I knew they were pretty knackered, so I just wanted to get back on the field and keep going," says Flannery. "I didn't want to give them any break.

"I still felt confident in the dressingroom and I just tried to get across to the lads because the backs don't know how it's going in the pack. I just kept saying, 'Listen, these guys are f*****. They can't handle it. They're walking, in the scrums they're not hitting half as hard, they're tired, they're looking for breaks. Keep battering them and we'll win.'"

"What the coaches and the players were saying was pretty much aligned," says McGahan. "We thought we were controlling Toulouse well enough. We just needed to keep hitting our targets and then pick up space on the edges, but we also needed a bit more variety in our kicking. We probably needed to shift it a bit more just to bring their wingers up, because they were waiting back for us and picking us off quite easily."

That said, McGahan recalls saying to Anthony Foley he was just waiting for Cédric Heymans to explode.

"He's too good a player not to contribute some magic to the day, isn't he?"

The second half. Hurley hit the line threateningly a few times, and on several occasions a glimmer of light appeared and then vanished; Maleli Kunavore being particularly good at showing the outside and then closing it off. "I'd have to look at the game again but from what I remember of it anyway there was nothing easy. For Doug's disallowed try, the lads had to pull off unbelievable steps to get through their defence. If it had been allowed it would have been a fantastic try. Credit to their defence. It took a moment of magic to break through."

6.0954 minutes. Yves Donguy's try makes it 13-all. "Tomás (O'Leary) put a great kick into touch, but the fact the ball didn't go over the barrier was Heymans's chance to have a go at us, and he took it," says Hurley. "As soon as the ball went over Doug's head you just knew something was going to happen. I think that's what he was waiting for the whole game; that one opportunity. They took it. You can't knock them for it."

"What stands out for me," recalls Flannery, "was when they scored their try and how calm we all were under the posts. Paul just pulled us in and said, 'This is the best thing for us; we play better if we're not protecting a lead. This is a good thing for us because we're going to keep playing rugby.' And that's very, very true. We could never have protected a lead for 20 minutes."

Battle joined, there was one more scare when Elissalde opted for a crosskick to a relieved Marcus Horan rather than put the ball through the hands. But the force was with Munster, and they kept playing after O'Gara edged them 16-13 ahead. Tipoki broke the Toulouse defensive line and stepped William Servat only for his offload to bounce off O'Connell's knee. After his stunning show-and-go to Howlett, Mafi beat Kunavore and Manu Ahotaeiloa but couldn't get away the offload for a clinching try.

In many matches, as O'Connell revealed afterwards, Munster aren't averse to "bitching" at each other, but in this game the talk was constant and positive.

"Whenever you got tired someone else would say, 'Suck it up,' y'know, 'Man up,' and during the sequence of pick-and-goes we were constantly on to each other," recalls Flannery. "You'd be lying on the ground with two or three lads on top of you and you'd be talking like: 'Get up, get up, they're going right, they're going right.' Constantly keeping the intensity up. Because it's very difficult to keep your focus for 80 minutes. But when everyone is staying on each other's back means that if you take a little breather somebody gets on your back and they tell you, 'Listen, you gotta man up here.'"

Death by pick-and-go.

"I just felt this was killing them," Flannery explains. "They were getting really frustrated. It was just the way to play them. Elissalde was bitching at the referee. He was getting quite animated. They were so eager, but they just couldn't get their hands on the ball."

McGahan was less comfortable in the stands. "When picking and driving like that, even though you are in control, it only takes a ball to flip out the side because you have such a density around the ruck area, and then with two passes we could have been back underneath our sticks. We were aware they were really going after the ball in the tackles."

Cue the final penalty in the 80th minute. O'Connell and O'Gara had a conflab about whether to go up the touchline or go for the posts. Flannery presumed the former and headed towards the touchline.

"Next second Rog tapped it and Paul was gone, so I just had to get up and support him as quick as I could."

Full-time: Munster 16 Stade Toulousain 13.

Expecting another few phases, Flannery was surprised to hear the final whistle. "I was just really happy when all the other lads who hadn't been in the squad came onto the field and we got them all onto the podium, because it's something you're thinking about for a long time and when it's finally done it's such a relief. And to have all your mates and the rest of the squad to celebrate with you is great.

"I know from days when I wasn't really involved it's a little awkward. Inside you feel a bit bad that you weren't really involved. When you see all the lads coming on to celebrate with you it means an awful lot to me anyway. And when the lights went out for the trophy presentation it was just class."

Hurley's exams meant he had never actually been to any of Munster's three previous Heineken Cup finals: "So to be actually standing in the middle of the pitch after winning a Heineken Cup and just looking at the fans going mental is absolutely unbelievable. I don't think it really will sink in for another while."

The lap of honour. Though he says it was more enjoyable than the 2006 win, Wallace had a feeling of sheer disbelief when the final whistle went. "I kept repeating, 'I can't believe it,' to myself for about 10 minutes. A surreal moment and it's hard to take everything in. You're trying to remember stuff and remember the crowd.

His wife, Aileen, was in the crowd: "and I was able to go over and meet her. That was a great moment. Every corner we got to it was just mind-blowing the way the supporters reacted to us. During the match you don't really fully appreciate the crowd, because you're concentrating on the game. You can't really just enjoy it. But at the end you can enjoy the crowd and the atmosphere, and take it in."

Emotions were running high, not least with O'Gara in the post-match interview with RTÉ, when the achievement was put in the context of his own, and Ireland's, miserable World Cup campaign.

"That's sport, and I'm getting emotional now thinking about it because," said O'Gara, pausing to take a deep breath. "These boys mean everything to me, Paulie, and it's the best jersey, and I think only the people of Munster realise that. It's on a par with probably an All Black jersey but in Munster it doesn't get any bigger. I'm just so proud to play for this team. They've given me everything and I just thank them."

Confusion reigned as Munster tried to round up the posse of players for the post-match reception in a marquee on the adjacent Cardiff Arms Park pitch. Hurley met up with his dad, mother, Mary, and sister Emma. He presumes his dad was a proud man that night but they hardly had a chance to talk. "We were on the phone for about 10 minutes on Monday but I'll have to sit down soon and have a pint with him and a good chat about things."

Likewise, Wallace hardly had a moment to speak to his parents, or his brothers; Henry having come over from Spain with his family. "With people coming up to ask for autographs or photographs - which you don't mind - it meant you were speaking to them in between. It was kind of mad in there."

The homeward journey, Cardiff Airport.

The players conducted a sing-song from a balcony with the supporters down below.

"That was pretty cool," chuckles Wallace. "I think Dougie did Vanilla Ice, Flah (Jerry Flannery) did Backstreet Boys. A different type of a sing-song."

Leaving behind the bedlam in Cardiff, the Aer Arann Charter RE 4412 took off late and the players came through to an awaiting crowd of about 1,000 after 1.30am. Kidney addressed them, and invited O'Connell to sing for them, who instead passed the microphone on to Howlett for a hoarse rendition of Stand Up and Fight.

A coach with a police escort took the players to the Clarion Hotel, with another coach for partners and travelling players/management. There were fewer supporters lining the streets this time. Fatigue, travel and drained emotions made for a relatively quiet night, according to Wallace, where a party was laid on at which former players such as John Kelly and Mike Prendergast showed up.

Hurley says he was exhausted by the end of the night/morning. "But when I woke up there was a smile on my face."

Sunday's civic reception. An open-top bus ride to O'Connell Street. The Tipoki-Mafi-Howlett haka.

"There's some mix in the team now; different cultures," says Hurley. "It was brilliant to see them doing that. Delighted for them, as well. I'm sure it was a pretty big day for them as well. I know Doug has had his seven years on the All Blacks and all but I'm fairly sure that is fairly well up on his CV."

The celebrations continued throughout Sunday. "They do party hard, and it's not just the players, it's the whole population of Munster and some," says Hurley. He had been talking to the former Munster winger John O'Neill, who likes to watch the final with his mates wherever the whim takes them. It took them, oddly enough, to Sligo.

"He said the pub was 'jointed', and all with Munster jerseys. It just shows the extent of the reach of Munster rugby and the pride people take in it." And, he presumes, there was a crammed pub or three in his own home town of Kells. He's only heard a few tales, and reckons he'll have to make a visit soon.

Tuesday night. Civic reception, Cork.

"This is almost the best night," according to Flannery. "In 2006 when we were down in Cork and it was just the players, and we finally got to sit down and have a drink.

"The first few days are kind of difficult. Everyone's tired after the game and then you're going bananas the next day, and people are getting split up. It's good when you finally get to sit down and have a few drinks with just the lads."

The future: "You'd be very foolish to write off this group of men," vows McGahan. "They have an exceptional amount of drive in them, they have a huge amount of pride in their rugby, but also in who they represent."

Another day of days. Another to tell the grandchildren about.