The Irish Mail on Sunday

After nightmare start to pro-career, Niall is now living the dream

- By Liam Heagney

NIALL SCANNELL may now be living the dream as the Munster and Ireland hooker but he isn’t one to forget his roots. The 25year-old popped along last Sunday to see his old club Dolphin in AllIreland League action and present them with one of his recentlyea­rned Test jerseys.

It was at Presentati­on, his old school though, where the seed to become a pro rugby player was first planted. Then 15 and a fourth-year student, he was called into a star-studded senior team containing Peter O’Mahony and Simon Zebo.

‘I can’t give you that quote, I can’t say that Zebo and Peter are an inspiratio­n. I’ll never hear the end of it,’ explained the Leesider, careful not to allow too much of his teenage backstory to become the focus of dressing-room banter. However, he’s more forthcomin­g when describing being plunged into the Dolphin front row at the age of 18.

‘I’d have Christy Condon, who played a good few years with the Irish clubs, on one side and Dave Ryan, contracted to Munster, on the other,’ he recalled.

He got litle joy at provincial level, though, the lowest point coming when Rob Penney flew in Kiwi Quentin MacDonald on a Tuesday and put him on the bench the following Saturday when Scannell felt he should have been the next hooker up. His frustratio­n didn’t dissipate either, a defeat in the British & Irish Cup defeat at Doncaster in January 2015 (nearly a year later) leaving him feeling his number was up. Time to go?

‘I remember putting my jersey down, thinking that could be my last game for Munster… I was nervous about getting any sort of a contract and, in fairness to Munster, they offered me a two-year, which is the one I’m finishing at the end of this season. They showed faith. I don’t know if I always had the same faith. Your confidence takes a bit of a knock when you’re in that scenario, next man up and then you’re not.’

It was the scrummagin­g influence of another short-term signing, Argentine Eusebio Guiñazú, which eventually opened Munster minds up to the different style of hooker play that now has Scannell very much part of the furniture.

‘Initially, I was thinking, “God, they’re after bringing in a guy that has 50 caps for Argentina”. It turned out he wasn’t fit, had been on a three-month break, but he did so much with me scrum-wise.

‘He was very much, “Get better at what you’re good at”. I used to have sit-downs with Axel (Anthony Foley) and I’d look at, for example, Mick Sherry’s breakthrou­gh season. He was so dynamic, playing on the edge of that 2-4-2 system, making breaks. He’s the starting guy, so you’re trying to get like him, but Seb helped me realise: “That’s not you. You’re going to be a big scrummager, physical in the tight exchanges.

‘Your breakdown has to be unbelievab­le. If you want to be a bigger man, you’ve got to be fit”. We’d loads of chats and he really broke it down with me.

‘I’d a bit more confidence going in to have chats with Axel, the confidence to say: “Yes, he is good at A but maybe I’m better at B”. That probably comes with growing up a little bit as well. But Seb also brought a massive scrum impact to the club. Axel and other players started realising that when our scrum goes well, we go well whereas we used to have a real lineout focus, what with Paulie (O’Connell) being the best lineout caller in the world.

‘I owe Seb a massive debt. He was just different from what we’d had as hookers. I was always aspiring to be what Jerry Flannery was – real dynamic, real mobile. Mike, similar. And Duncan (Casey) and Damien Varley. That’s what I kept trying to get to and Seb just showed me there’s actually room for a different style of hooker. It was him, not me, who showed Axel the market for that and then maybe they saw a bit of that in me.

‘I remember Axel saying: I don’t think you’re very good at poaching SAFE HANDS: Munster’s Niall Scannell but you’re very hard to move. That probably sums it up. I just try to be big in those areas and then ball-carrying-wise, if you’re going to be the bigger hooker, you have to be fit enough to get around the park to get your hands on the ball, to step up and make sure you’re being dominant in those exchanges and I’m more than happy to step up in the 22 when they’re not the prettiest carries, when they’re not busts, they’re not line-breaks.’

Scannell was a TV spectator in 2014 when Munster last contested a European semi-final. Their return to the last four is a surprise given the pool stage elimiation­s of the past two years, and even he cannot quite explain the transforma­tion.

‘I’d love to be able to put my finger on it and you could say hopefully we can do it again next year and the year after... there is loads of little factors but the two major factors are we all moved to one centre (in Limerick), are probably a lot tighter, and Axel’s passing unfortunat­ely happened and we had to deal with it. We have come out of it rugby-wise in a positive sense, which has been brilliant to do him justice that way.’

One thing they’d be certain of, though, is Scannell has become the real deal, his patience now reaping its huge rewards.

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