As a substitute, Munster went for the jugular, getting their reward once they went lengthy within the line-out, stored possession and finally labored Kelly over within the nook for the required fourth strive. With a 25-point lead, it might all come right down to O’Gara’s conversion.
“I believe Rog has mentioned he knew what he wanted to do, however I bear in mind having a dialog with him and he hadn’t a clue. None of us had any concept that the conversion on the finish was necessary,” says the try-scorer.
“It was solely [assistant coach] Brian Hickey who was on the sidelines, displaying the forwards what we must do when it comes to making an attempt to stand up the sector for a drop goa in case Rog missed the conversion.
“Mick O’Driscoll was speaking to me within the dressing room after the sport and saying, he was taking a look at Brian Hickey going, ‘what’s he on about?’
“It was really a very good ploy as a result of I believe if we have been fixated on 4 tries and 27 factors or 28 then we’d by no means have gotten it.”
An immediate basic, the sport has since turn into shrouded in fable, such because the Limerick taxi driver who apparently discovered Gloucester’s line-out calls behind his cab or the visiting blazers who sat down for the post-match operate nonetheless believing their facet had nonetheless superior to the final eight too.
For what it is price, Kelly refutes the previous however believes the latter. What’s undoubted, nevertheless, is how the sport was turn into part of Munster folklore with Kelly a central character within the fabled story.
The province would go on to lose to Toulouse within the semi-finals and must wait till 2006 to lastly get their arms on European rugby’s prime prize. Maybe, nevertheless, it’s these 80 minutes which have come to finest encapsulate the facet’s defining qualities throughout a golden period.
“It was one of many higher days,” says Kelly.
“Paul O’Connell used to say, that you recognize you’ve got had a kind of days at any time when each joke within the dressing room is humorous. It did not matter what anybody mentioned that day, it was humorous.
“It is simply a kind of sensible emotions. To be sincere with you, individuals ask me what do you miss from rugby? And it is these large days, significantly the massive days once you had a consequence, and that dressing room afterwards.”
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