Trevor Brennan's Toulouse DiaryTrevor Brennan had a weekend that will live long in his memory as Toulouse qualified for the quarter-finals, watched by his Munster friends
Well, another good weekend of rugby, and a pretty hectic one too. On Thursday, I'd just come out of the village café after having lunch with Paula when the phone rang. The Red Army invasion had started, and it was The Claw (Peter Clohessy), who'd just arrived in Toulouse with his wife, Anna, and a plane full of Munster heads.
He asked me if I was around to meet up and I said I had training at 4pm and wouldn't be able to meet until about eight. After training, Paula came to pick me up while the squad headed off to the hotel because our coach, Guy Noves, wanted us to focus our minds on the Wasps' game for two nights; understandably so given last week's performance against Bayonne.
Personally, two days in a hotel is not a good way to pass the time. All you do is sleep, eat, and watch videos of the opposition or bad French TV. I told Guy I had to meet a friend after training and he said "no problem. Just keep it quiet and be back in the hotel before midnight". So we headed down to the De Danu bar with my wife and two friends of theirs.
When I opened the door I was met by the Red Army. They'd hit the town with a bang. The Fields of Athenry was being sung by about 30 of them in the front part of the bar, and just inside the door another 10 of them were playing cards with their bodhrans close by.
I'd imagine it was just like any Irish pub, or at any rate a Limerick pub, on the Saturday night after a match in Thomond Park. I made my way through the crowds to the back of the bar. It took a while. I was presented with a bodhran for the bar by some of the Munster Supporters' Club, with their crest and the Toyota symbol on it. A nice touch.
Myself and Claw also posed for a few photographs and it was great to see the likes of Alan Quinlan's mother and Donncha O'Callaghan's mother, along with so many other familiar faces. When I got to the back of the bar I had a jug of water while the Claw and his friends tucked into a few creamy ones.
Kallidopop, the resident band, were belting out some of their tunes and it was good to catch up with the Claw and exchange old stories. He told me one story of his time in the Irish squad, when I wasn't there, of this new fitness or weights guy.
This fella comes into the gym one day and says: "Right Claw, time to do some weights." "I don't do weights," says the Claw.
"No, you have to do weights." "No, I'm not doing them," maintains the Claw.
So this fella goes off to Brian O'Brien and says: "I have a problem with one of the players." "Go on," says Briano.
"Claw won't do any weights." "He has never done weights in his life," says Briano, "and if Peter says he doesn't want to do weights, he doesn't do weights."
The Fanatic arrived in France on Friday via Carcassone with his good mate Corky (Kevin Corcoran). Fan number one, and fan number two. They've clocked up 40 flights between them in my three and a half years in Toulouse. And never with their wives! I rang the da around lunchtime while they were in the train station in Carcassone.
"How are you?" I asked him.
"Fine, fine . . . Two tickets to Toulouse please . . . Yeah, I'm fine . . . Oui, oui . . . How much? A rip-off . . . Which train is it? What time is it leaving? Corky, hurry up, we're going to miss it."
He'd obviously forgotten he was still on the phone to me and in the background I could hear the train tooting. Ooh-ooh. Oooh-ooh. "Which one are we on?" I could hear him say, and then Corky said: "Follow the lads in red." "Are yeez going to Toulouse? Jump in there Corky." I hung up and nearly wet myself laughing. I gave him a couple of hours to calm down and when I rang him back he was on his second bottle of wine as they were tucking into some fish and chips in the De Danu.
Last weekend, I'd said if the matches went right it would be a good weekend, and they did, with wins for Munster, Toulouse and Leinster. And it was a great weekend. Arriving into the stadium on Saturday and coming onto the pitch the sight of the sell-out 37,000 crowd was remarkable. It was a sea of black and red for Toulouse with a couple of hundred Wasps.
But it was amazing to see there were more red Munster shirts in the crowd than there were Wasps supporters, as about 500 of them, it seemed, had stayed on after Munster's brilliant win in Castres and didn't go home until Sunday or Monday. You could see a fair few Munster shirts in the crowd and the odd tricolour, but then it dawned on me they were amongst the Wasps supporters, as they have three or four Irishmen in their team as well. Johnny O'Connor and Jeremy Staunton started, while Eoin Reddan and Peter Bracken were brought on from the bench. For once the tricolours weren't for me.
The atmosphere was electric and those Munster fans who made a weekend of it got to see two great games. The bar was as busy on Saturday and Sunday night as it was on Thursday night. We got off to a great start and after a couple of penalties Freddie Michalak made a break from his own 22 and we went the length of the pitch to score in the corner. That's Freddie, and the conversion made it 13-0.
After that, though, it largely turned into a battle of the forwards and we had to defend our line and other parts of the pitch for long spells of the first and the second halves. Nearing half-time (Paul) Sackey nearly got over when they went right, and then they spread the ball to the left, through Sackey and Johnny O'Connor. That left (Tom) Voyce one-on-one with Trevor Brennan. A little sidestep and I missed the tackle. Hands up there, lads. He offloaded to (Raphael) Ibanez. 13-7. Game on.
In the second half a few penalties were exchanged and we hung on to win 19-13.
Fellas really put their bodies on the line. It was great to see the likes of Xavier Garbajosa almost playing as an extra forward. (Frederic) Michalak made a great start and it was fantastic to see the way a lot of our forwards stood up to Wasps. Talking to people afterwards, including their players, everyone reckoned it was like an international for intensity and physicality.
Again, though, it came at a cost. Finau Maka suffered three fractures in his face and will be out for three months, while Alfie (Gareth Thomas) aggravated a knee ligament problem. He'll probably miss this week's game against Llanelli but beyond that we don't know. Alfie had some of his family over as well and that night 12 of us went for a meal. Later on we headed into the bar. The Wasps players tried to get in but couldn't and so the English bar across the road did a bit of business for a change. When I did a rendition of Dublin In the Rare Oul Times, the Munster fans sang along. For a change it was the wife dragging me out of the pub at the end but the Munster lads didn't let up.
If I was a Munster player I'd be so proud of them. There wasn't a bit of trouble in the bar or in Toulouse all weekend.
Back into training on Monday, and Guy Noves wasted no time telling us that while we have qualified, we are nowhere near sure of a home quarter-final, and for that to happen we need to beat Llanelli. We were reminded how important this is to the club.
Last Wednesday I signed a contract to the end of the 2007 World Cup. I'm delighted that I'll be having a fifth season at one of the best clubs in Europe. Not bad, eh? And we need that home quarter-final for the club to afford my massive pay increases.
(In an interview with Gerry Thornley)
(Trevor Brennan's regular Heineken Cup column can be read on the ERC website, which is at www.ercrugby.com)
