In a belated tribute to his retired teammate Jerry Flannery, Paul O’Connell has dug out a hilarious video of Fla dramatically celebrating a try early in his Munster career.
On his Twitter page earlier today, O’Connell posted footage from a pre-season friendly between Munster and Gloucester way back in 2001 which was featured as part of a tribute to Flannery on RTE News following his retirement earlier this week.
In the video, Flannery, with a scrum cap on his head but no number on his back, can be seen executing something akin to a swallow dive to touch down in the corner after a well-executed line-out move and then proceeds to celebrate wildly while the rest of his teammates enthusiastically join in, go quietly about their business.
In fairness to Flannery, he didn’t score too many tries throughout his career so he was well entitled to milk the celebrations afterwards, even if, according to O’Connell, there were less than 500 people in attendance.
Alan Quinlan is the man in the number seven jersey and although he is closest to Flannery after the try, he looks as if he would rather be a million miles away from his ecstatic if mildly embarrassing teammate.
As well as his ability and his influence for both Munster and Ireland, it’s humour like this that we’ll miss from Flannery now that he’s been forced to call it a day and judging by the unmistakeable laugh at the end of the clip, O’Connell got a good giggle out of it as well.
Check it out for yourself in the video above, even if the quality of the picture isn’t much to write home about (sort it out about Paul!).
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