Over the years, the story of a famous meeting within the Irish rugby camp during the early days of the Declan Kidney era has been broached from time to time.
Leinster full back Rob Kearney stood up in the meeting in Enfield according to some versions and queried whether their Ireland team-mates of a Munster persuasion were more concerned with events in a red jersey than the international green.
Ultimately, the Grand Slam would be won and today at our Cork Opera House Roadshow with Heineken, former Munster and Ireland great Paul O'Connell looked back on his own recollection of that meeting.
"Everyone has their own memories of that meeting and everyone has their own version of events," he said, before jokingly adding, "I'm pretty sure mine is the most accurate" to gales of laughter from the Opera House crowd.
"We were split up into groups and we were doing a swat analysis or something and I think ROG (Ronan O'Gara) was in Rob Kearney's group and each person had to present what their group had said.
Paul O'Connell and Rob Kearney ©INPHO/Dan Sheridan
"My memory of what Rob said was, 'Why can't we have something like the Thomond Park atmosphere in Landsdowne Road or that kind of intensity?' I think he was asking the question in a decent, nice way. It was kind of complimentary. I think ROG had kind of read it out and then Marcus Horan had asked him to read that bit again and ROG then said, 'Well, Rob Kearney actually said that' and I think it was a good thing actually because I never felt any Munster-Leinster thing. We were always massive rivals and you were probably more friendly with the Munster guys than you were with the Leinster guys but you had guys then like Kevin Maggs and Simon Easterby and Guy Easterby in the middle of it all who would break it all up and make a bit of fun about it. So I never really sensed it."
He added that "Irish team was very, very tight" as a group.
Paul O'Connell had plenty of praise for one former Munster and Ireland team-mate #OTBCork #HeinekenRugbyClub pic.twitter.com/tU0fF3IE46
— Off The Ball (@offtheball) October 11, 2017
