EUROPEAN CUP QUARTER-FINAL/PAUL O'CONNELL INTERVIEW:LAST SATURDAY week in Musgrave Park, with Munster 28-6 up against Ulster and a bonus point in the bag, James Coughlan burst through Niall O'Connor's tackle and triumphantly touched down for a rare try for the province. Paul O'Connell walked up to him and pointed to the posts, indicating to the backrower he could have narrowed the angle for the conversion. He's back, as ruthless and as hungry as ever, perhaps even hungrier.
It's been a long, well-documented and tortuous road for the Munster and Ireland lock. Even the respites from his long-running back problems have offered only frustration, working his way back into the Ireland team for the worst Six Nations campaign since 1999 to compound that dismal World Cup.
But as is the case for Irish rugby generally, so also for O'Connell, and even in the grim days there was always the succour of a Heineken European Cup quarter-final this Saturday - the Munster captain's first appearance in the competition this season after sitting through all of the pool stages.
"I wanted to make sure I was available," says O'Connell. "I don't know what I would have done had I not been available for this game. It was a very frustrating time. It was a small-enough injury but it just kept dragging out.
"You'd nearly be happier if you were told it was a serious injury and you'd be out for 10 weeks - you can start planning things then.
"But I think after the disappointment of the World Cup, not to be able to go hell for leather into training and into matches was a frustrating time. Then to watch the guys playing so well in a half-new Thomond Park is tough.
"But that's why we have such a good squad, and in fairness to Declan (Kidney) he's quietly assembled a very good squad and it's paid dividends for us."
Admitting "it is very much our strongest squad since I've been involved", now he's back with Munster in cup-final-every-week mode, exactly where he wants to be.
"These are always the biggest weekends of the year. It's always the best part of the year, after Christmas, after the Six Nations, when you're still in the European Cup.
"So yeah, it's a massive game, a massive occasion - big support travelling and a lot of hullabaloo about the game around Limerick and everything.
"These are the best times of the year to be a Munster player and to be in the starting XV."
Nothing concentrates the Munster mindset quite like the whiff of failure, all the more so if it comes with a history lesson or two. As if storming the Kingsholm fortress wasn't sufficient motivation in itself, Munster have the salient reminders of two past defeats there.
"I suppose in one way it's a bad thing for us to have lost there twice but in another way it makes you respect the fixture so much," says O'Connell.
Perhaps even more pertinently, there was last season's defeat to Llanelli at this same stage.
They've put that well behind them, he says, but concedes, "We didn't really perform when we went over there. It was a very tough game but we didn't perform and I think that was in the back of our minds when the lads played Llanelli twice this season (in the Magners League). Yeah, I think we'll be looking to put that right this time around and really put in a Munster-type performance this time around."
Munster can also call on the experience of a 10th successive quarter-final, having won six of their last eight at this juncture - two of them away.
O'Connell cites discipline as a key factor in what he expects will be a very big battle up front, and not coughing up turnovers against a Gloucester side that scores many of its tries from this source.
"They have a very good back three so you can't kick any loose ball to them. It's very hard to see any weaknesses in their team.
"They've a very good scrum. Their lineout hasn't been the greatest at times but from what I've watched of it they've a lot of very good options.
"It's just the same as every week except it's a bigger occasion and a bigger moment."
Famously, when denied a warm-up match away to Llanelli because of torrential rain prior to beating Perpignan in the quarter-finals at Lansdowne Road two seasons ago en route to reaching their holy grail, the returning Ireland internationals and those in camp with Munster compensated by tearing into each other in training. Not so this week, notes O'Connell, grateful they had a productive, technical scrummaging session yesterday.
"Sometimes you can end up smashing into each other in scrimmaging without really learning anything. We did a lot of technical stuff, which is great.
"We're lucky in that Macker (Paul McCarthy) and Frankie (Sheahan) have a lot of knowledge, and those little bits are very important. They set the tone for the weekend."
Helpfully, Munster have had two Magners League matches since the Six Nations in readiness for a return to Europe, rather than the customary crash course, though O'Connell is fully aware they will need to up their performances considerably from the wins over Ulster and Connacht.
"When we looked at the Ulster game I can't see us scoring some of the tries we scored that day in a Heineken Cup match. Some of the scores were a small bit soft. We turned over the ball an awful lot, especially after making the breaks.
"Once you've done the damage the main thing is to retain the ball and last week in the conditions we got frustrated with some of the mistakes we made.
"So there's a lot of bits to be improved on but normally these weeks are special weeks in the Munster camp and we do get into a very good frame of mind come Saturday."
