LONG READ Munster duo John Ryan & Niall Scannell: ‘We’ve left those jerseys in a good place’

“You think you’re jumping on to have a nostalgic talk about how much you love the club and all your team-mates, and all that. Then the first thing you get is all your team-mates have actually ratted you out and told a load of stories about you!”

It is Monday after the ‘third or fourth goodbye’ and it is now official – Niall Scannell and John Ryan are former professional rugby players. Both are not long back from school runs and have items on the to-do lists that need ticking off. Are they able to give up an hour of their mornings to look back on their rugby careers? “I could sit here all morning,” Scannell jokes. “Take all the time you need.”

Between the pair, they played 461 times for Munster and 44 times for their country. Along the way, lining out together and occasionally apart, there were league titles, Grand Slams, Barbarians appearances, a winning tour to Australia, a rough World Cup and, for Ryan, stints in England and New Zealand. There is no better place to start though, than gathering stories to prompt memories, and slag them about.

Five former team-mates have been kind enough to message back with tales of ‘Boris’ (Ryan) and ‘Toad’ (Scannell). Both suspect Dave ‘Killer’ Kilcoyne, their former front-row colleague, has done all the stitching up. In truth, he was only one of the co-collaborators.

“I was called all sorts of names, when I was starting off,” says Ryan, “and ‘Boris’ came from lads saying I was a bit of a Russian. Joe Schmidt was the only one that alluded to Boris Johnson, really. But, look, it just stuck for the last 10, 12 years, I’d say. I don’t think anyone calls me John in that building. It’s all Boris.”

“There’s not even a big story behind mine,” says Scannell of his moniker. “I was just slagging Killer on the team bus, one day. I was shouting back at him and he called me a toad. That got a big reaction. It was one of those moments where, instantly, I knew, ‘Oh no, the mob has latched on to this one’. And that was literally it. That’s been the nickname since, unfortunately.”

Another team-mate asked to remind them about sneaking Tim Tams and doughnuts up to their room, while away in South Africa. “Maybe it was one of those cheat days we had, because we’d usually be f**king afraid of getting caught,” Ryan offers.

“No,” Scannell cuts in. “The issue was, a load of lads got a few doughnuts and they were eating them in the reception. And I’m 90% sure it was Killer, then, who spread the rumour that we were sneaking them up to our room and eating them, and that we were secret snacking up there.”

I know some clubs do have certain traditions, whether it be shaving your head, or whatever. In Munster the initial one, for a few months, is just surviving the craic.

Scannell has Ryan’s back, and vice-versa. That has been the way for the past 15 years. Ryan was a late starter in the pro game, making his senior Munster debut at the age of 23. Scannell signed a development contract with the province, just after he turned 20. Their paths had crossed three years before Scannell jumped to the senior squad. “I do remember,” Ryan notes, “you were known for being lippy and you were quite a confident young man. You used to come up and chat to senior lads.”

“Jesus, you really knocked that out of me, in fairness to you,” Scannell fires back. When Scannell brings up beating Ryan’s Cork Constitution in a club game, the tighthead is not having it. “Niall, I’m undefeated against Dolphin, I’m sorry to tell you that, it’s unfortunate.”

The hooker broke into Munster’s main squad back when the team was still split into training pods in Cork and Limerick. When Munster moved to centralise their senior squad in Limerick, some older players would commute from Cork. Scannell and Ryan made the move up, and their friendship grew.

Rugby environments are often ruthless, and slagging can be near-constant. The older players in the squad tend to push a lot of buttons when the new crop arrives, probing for weakness, or potential comedy. When the likes of Conor Murray, Peter O’Mahony, Tommy O’Donnell and Keith Earls were breaking through, there was an infamous team bus mutiny – the newcomers strapped themselves into the back row, shouting from a megaphone that they would not be moved. Prompted by Doug Howlett – ‘Wouldn’t happen on my watch, mate’ – captain Paul O’Connell gathered big units Tony Buckley, Mick O’Driscoll and John Hayes to end the uprising.

“I know some clubs do have certain traditions,” says Scannell, “whether it be shaving your head, or whatever. In Munster the initial one, for a few months, is just surviving the craic. It’s getting slagged and seeing how fellas react, because if you bite, early on, they realise they’ve got an easy target, and you’re in big trouble. That’s probably what I did. I gave too much of a rise, too early, and it led to 15 years of Killer never leaving me alone.

“If you can survive the bit of slagging, and a bit of craic, for a few months and then survive your first Christmas party without making a complete fool of yourself, you’re probably in the clear, then.”

Is it as tough for younger players coming into the Munster squad, now? “No,” Scannell replies. “I think it’s gone the other way. It’s nearly like we have to be interviewed by the Gen Z-ers, don’t we? There’s so many of them in there now. We have to be so nice to them that it’s nearly like we have to integrate them! To be fair, in Munster, particularly at the moment, there’s a great group of young fellas in there.”

Ryan’s team-mates are familiar with his self-deprecating nature. “I don’t think he knows how good he really was,” a former team-mate told me. The prop admits it took him until the first game of the 2016/17 season, when he was 28, until he felt convinced he truly belonged. “We were playing Scarlets away,” he recalls. “That was the game where I said, ‘Jeez, I can actually do this, and I feel really comfortable’. I was giving tighthead a real go and had said I would not be loosehead any more. I was strictly playing as a tighthead, and it felt great.”

Your man Rassie goes absolutely berserk. He makes us pretty much watch the entire 80 minutes. We must have been in there for about two hours and he was going absolutely crazy.

Scannell played 24 times (10 starts) in 2015/16 but the following season, he feels, was the real breakthrough. At the end of 2016/17, both he and Ryan would be nominated for Munster’s Player of the Year accolade. It was a campaign that saw new faces arrive, early momentum gained and, ultimately, tragedy strike. Rassie Erasmus arrived as director of rugby, bringing Jacques Nienaber with him, as defence coach. Anthony Foley, who had led Munster over the previous season, remained as head coach but in a more on-field capacity.

“Initially, Rassie wasn’t on the pitch,” Ryan recalls. “He was out having a look but let Axel do all the coaching. Axel was loving it. You could see that he was really enjoying it because the year before had been very tough for him… there was a great vibe around the place, and we started the season well.”

Munster won four of their opening five league games but their one defeat, 23-24 at home to Cardiff, saw Erasmus lay down some unshakeable lessons. “That was honestly the biggest impact Rassie had for me, that Cardiff game,” says Scannell.

“We had a lot of losses, the year before. This was our first loss under Rassie. I remember we went into a meeting on the Monday, and there were four names on the whiteboard. I was one of them. There was also Darren Sweetnam, Duncan Williams and Ronan O’Mahony. Just four names, written in bold, on the whiteboard.

“Then, next thing, your man goes absolutely berserk. He makes us pretty much watch the entire 80 minutes. We must have been in there for about two hours and he was going absolutely crazy. Meanwhile, the whole time, I was sitting there thinking, ‘Why is my name written behind him? What is coming here?’“Rassie went through like every tackle. We weren’t physical on the night and I think that was the stall he was setting out – this was not going to be accepted. At the end of that meeting, he gave us four potential reasons that you could be soft. It was something like, I wasn’t prepared, I’m not physically strong enough, I don’t have the technical skillset, and I was scared and didn’t want to be there. Basically, they were all terrible options. Rassie was like, ‘Everyone needs to email me by lunchtime and tell me your reason why you were so soft on Friday night’.

“Then, he pointed to the board, said, ‘Except these four guys’, and walked out.”

“As you can see,” Ryan chimes in, “this is an extremely self-serving story!”

Scannell laughs. “It is, but we won 20 of our next 21 games, after that meeting. Honestly, fellas were just like, ‘I’m not going through that again’.”

It was the strangest feeling I’ve had before a game because I felt very emotional, but I didn’t really feel any pressure.

In the middle of Munster’s winning run, the entire province was rocked by the passing of Foley, in Paris. Foley suffered an ‘acute pulmonary oedema’ and was found, unresponsive, in his hotel room, on the day of a Champions Cup match against Racing 92. He was only 42. The game was postponed but, somehow, Munster would line out, the following weekend, to take on Glasgow in a highly emotional cup encounter.

Ryan recalls: “We were doing our captain’s run on the Friday and then we got into our suits, jumped on the bus and went to the funeral. It’s absolutely crazy. That week is a blur, for sure. We barely trained. We just did a bit of a jog around, and a captain’s run, then attended the funeral.”

“It was the strangest feeling I’ve had before a game,” says Scannell, “because I felt very emotional, but I didn’t really feel any pressure. Rassie made us feel that, look, after the week you guys have had, nobody is expecting you to pitch up here and be unbelievably good. Go out there for Axel, work hard and just hit things, and nobody cares about the result.”

Munster would lose Earls to an early red card, but had too much for Glasgow and triumphed 38-17. “I remember the relief after the game,” Scannell says. “Just that we had actually won.”

“Everything came to a head after it finished,” Ryan adds. “The crowd stayed for an hour after the game. Nobody left their seats. And the singing afterwards was crazy. So, it was pretty fitting for Axel, to be fair.”

Munster would only lose once in their next 21 games, reaching the semi-finals of the Champions Cup and final of the Pro12. Ultimately, they would finish the season without any silverware. “For the semis, Saracens were a freakish team,” Ryan notes. “It was quite tight (6-3 to Saracens) until the 55^th minute. Then, Billy Vunipola turned super-freak and it was just crazy. He was running through lads.

“Looking back, it wasn’t really sustainable – us keeping up those high levels all season. We had that crash against Saracens but the one I regret was the final, against Scarlets. They were a brilliant team that season, but we blew it.”

Erasmus and Nienaber headed back to South Africa, near the end of 2017, and Johann van Graan took over. He would lead Munster to further Champions Cup semi-finals, in his first two seasons. “Expectations were very high,” says Ryan. “You look back now and we were consistently in the last four in Europe, but we wanted so much more.” Scannell adds. “That was probably the hardest part for our careers. We lost so many semis and a quarter final (shoot-out) to Toulouse. It was gut-wrenching.”

When it comes to their respective Ireland careers, Ryan and Scannell zero in on the 2018 tour to Australia, a few months after the team had clinched a Grand Slam. “It was a real honour for me to start that first Test,” says Ryan. “Tadhg (Furlong) was bolted in there for just about every game, but he was coming off a long season and Joe Schmidt told me I was starting. That faith he had in me was huge. I actually played decent in that game, and we were doing well, but we were pipped at the end. I played in the final Test, when we won the series, but getting that start meant an awful lot.”

Scannell mentions the 2017 Test against USA, when he played alongside his brother, Rory, and his involvement in the 2019 World Cup. Still, the tour Down Under stands out. “I actually had a horrific season, that year. I had so many injuries, I was out for most of the Six Nations. I came back, got another niggle and felt I definitely would not be making the tour. Then, Rory (Best) had a hamstring issue, heading into camp. I was invited down to train and was told that was it. As time went on, they kept me in camp and I never went home. I felt unbelievably under-prepared for that tour and didn’t feel I was in the best shape. Someho, though, I played pretty well over there. It was probably some of the most comfortable I felt playing for Ireland. I started the last two Tests, and we won them. I’ll let you read into that, compared to John’s statistics, there!”

In 2022, Ryan followed van Graan out the exit door. While the South African took up a coaching role at Bath, Ryan headed to Wasps. He played a handful of games for his new club but there were already loud rumblings of trouble before the Premiership season even kicked off. He recalls coming off the pitch after a pre-season game, switching on his phone and seeing a message from JJ Hanrahan – ‘I’m so sorry. Hope all is okay’. It was the first of many concerned texts and calls. It had been leaked that Wasps would be appointing administrators. Within weeks, the two-time European Cup winners had been suspended from all tournaments.

Graham Rowntree had taken over from Van Graan at Munster, and brought the Cork native back on a short-term deal. “It’s worth noting,” Scannell chips in, “that we were in absolute horrors at tighthead, when John happened to be available. He played eight games when we had no tightheads. And that was huge because I remember we kind of had to start moving around Christmas. We were around 11^th or 12^th and started climbing. It always feels like John washes his hands of that URC win but, to be fair to him, if we didn’t have him at that stage of the season, with the injuries we had, we would have been in a lot of trouble.”

That core, older group were probably all thinking, ‘All right, I’m not going to have many more of these opportunities. F**k it, we’re going for this every week. We’re not losing’.

Ryan would finish that 2022/23 season having played for three clubs – Wasps, Munster and down in New Zealand with Chiefs. As for Munster, they went from scraping into the URC play-offs to winning the whole thing, and ending a 12-year trophy wait. Their final six games of the season were all played on the road. Their hooker, who had just welcomed Daniel James Scannell to the world, was not around to see (or help with) much of his first two months in the family.

“I have to give huge credit to the leadership from that senior group,” says Scannell. “The likes of Pete, Conor, Earlsie and Stephen Archer. That core, older group who were probably all thinking, ‘All right, I’m not going to have many more of these opportunities. F**k it, we’re going for this every week. We’re not losing’.

“The more we won on the road, and against the odds, it was nearly like, ‘Well, why not now?’ Sometimes things can just click and you can get that momentum at the right time.”

Later that year, Ryan was reunited with Scannell after “the experience of a lifetime” with Chiefs. The duo played together for three more seasons. Scannell remarks that Ryan saved his best ever performance for the province in his final game – a home win over Lions when he came off the bench and produced “three of the best tackles of his career, in 15 minutes”. “Leave then wanting more,” Ryan reasons, with a smile.

As rugby retirement sinks in, they are left with so many warm memories and so few regrets. “I think I did as much as I could, in the jersey,” says Ryan. “I played for Munster, on and off, over those three stints and I always gave my all to that jersey. I’m happy enough to walk away now. I would have liked to have won more trophies but, for the most part, that is out of your control. Whatever limited ability I had, I put it all out on the pitch.”

“I know that I was never the most talented guy,” Scannell admits. “I was never massively bigged up, coming out of school, academy or anything like that. JJ has enjoyed pointing out all week that I was a late developer. I just felt I was really lucky with some of the coaches I had, and players I interacted with, early in my career. When I was about 22, I stopped focusing on all the things I was never going to be able to do, and concentrated on getting good at certain elements and strengths. I feel I squeezed everything I could out of it.

“I tried, trained and recovered as well as I could, and played at the top level for 13 years. I do feel I gave the jersey all I could. I gave it all I had and was pretty content. I was never a Keith Earls, but that’s not the job myself and John were in. It was rarely the headlines or the highlights, but we’ve left those jerseys in a good place.”