Flannery was annoyed at his former team mate’s comments during commentary of the Zebre game.

Munster’s forwards coach Jerry Flannery has replied to criticism from former team mate Alan Quinlan over his side’s victory over Zebre a couple of weeks ago.

Whilst co commentating on the tie, Quinlan was critical of his former province’s performance against the Italian’s, which didn’t sit well with Flannery.

The former International hooker was a guest on SportsJoe.ie’s podcast the hard yards during the week and claimed that just because you have represented Munster in the past, doesn’t mean that you have any insight or knowledge as to what’s going on in the club today.

Flannery said: “People will watch it and say, ‘Well Alan Quinlan must know what’s going on at Munster because he played for them’, but Alan Quinlan has absolutely no idea what’s going on at Munster. Nothing. He hasn’t got an iota of what we do in here.”

Quinlan came in as a late replacement for Ieuan Evans for the Pro 14 fixture after the welsh man couldn’t make the game, and Flannery was particularly aggrieved that the Sky Sports pundit didn’t take into account the huge absentee list his side have had to deal with as of late.

“We were missing this amount of players and you have to look at things in context of the game. I don’t know whether he had done any preparation for it. I don’t think he had.

“It didn’t seem like he had because when people relayed the comments back to me, I just went, ‘This doesn’t make sense’.

“I understand that people will come out and give their opinion but their opinion should be based on something. If it’s not based on preparation, well then they’re actually not doing their job and they should not be getting paid for it, in my opinion.”

“Like, if I don’t do my work as a coach I’m going to get sacked.”

“If, for instance, Sky think that it’s deemed credible that if someone has just played for a club that they can go out and just give their opinion without doing any work, well, they’re kind of cheating the viewers. People are paying for their subscription to watch it and they want to get some sort of analysis or… if they’re not getting it then there is a breakdown there.”

In the end, the Munster man didn’t mean the comments in a personal way, but did get in a bit of a jibe acknowledging some of Quinlan’s work on television.

 “Look, sometimes it can be irritating when guys that were part of the club are doing that, you know. I don’t know whether they see it as sort of an attachment to their time at the club or don’t want to see the club move forward because then they’re not seen in the same standing that they might have been… but that’s a poor mindset to have, for my opinion.”

“But, look, Quinny was very good on Ireland’s Fittest Family. He’s good at that stuff.”

You can listen to the full podcast here.

https://soundcloud.com/thehardyardssportsjoe/ep-40-jerry-flannery-fires-back-at-munster-criticism-and-kevin-mclaughlin-has-more-apologising-to-do