IT was the night when one story ended and another, brimming with brooding epic, just kept on rambling towards a conclusion that few had suspected would have an inevitable outcome.
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There was no sudden ending; for either Munster, who lost the game against Sale but would ultimately triumph in the Heineken Cup the following May; or for Frankie Sheahan, who suffered the damage to his neck that would slowly, catastrophically, signal the end of his professional journey.
There was no real conclusion; just a punctuation mark for one story and the incipient, tortuous conclusion to another.
Munster were a decade into their quest for European rugby’s Holy Grail when they trundled into Stockport County’s claustrophobic Edgeley Park one October evening in 2005 – think Coronation Street minus the pebbles – to begin their latest unrelenting assault on the Heineken Cup.
Sale were riding high in the English Premiership; Munster, as ever, were indomitable candidates but always susceptible to a punishing early blow that would leave them seeking a familiar Thomond Park miracle down the line.
There would be no miraculous recovery for Sheahan, however. He would play on, eventually postponing the inevitable retirement until 2009, but the rot had set in well before then; Stockport would mark the beginning of the slow end.
The irony was that, as they approached their latest in a series of self-revealing explorations en route to becoming champions of Europe, both Munster and Sheahan had never felt better.
“Sale were a huge team at the time, with massive ball-carriers, nothing like the team they have now,” recalls Sheahan. “In the weeks leading up to the game, we worked really hard on the scrum. I don’t think my neck had been stronger at any time before.
“And then Sale happened. For many reasons, it was one of the most extraordinary games I ever played.”
As he braced himself for the first scrum, Sheahan was bristling with intent. Then the snap that indicated that all was not as it should have been.
“I went into the first scrum and something snapped in my neck. I was like ‘Oh, f***.” There was no f***ing way in the world that I was going to come off. Looking back now, though, it was crazy that I stayed on.”
But he did, fuelled by adrenaline and the often ignorant – but equally undeniably complicit – understanding that to not do so would impugn him as someone who was letting the team down and letting himself down.
The adrenaline would fuel unrecognised strength from within, often unwittingly. He scored a try from a familiar Munster tactic, the rolling maul, which put his side 10-9 ahead; a previous night’s impromptu visit from Roy Keane had made Declan Kidney’s team, and Sheahan, believe anything was possible.
Then he recalls Jason Robinson, then English rugby’s most electrifying attacker, attacking a familiar route on the blindside of a Munster lineout.
“He’d try to single out front-row fatties taking a breather in the second half. I hurled myself at him, it was like catching a fly. I hit him in the shins with the top of my head. Blood started spurting out. Eanna Falvey put ten staples in top of my head. I came back on again. Now I’ve done my neck and my head. Late on, I got binned for stopping what would have been a certain try.
“There was a lot of pain but adrenaline was getting me through. After that first scrum, I was dipping my head a bit more to get the impact on my shoulder, I needed to adapt to work my body so the neck didn’t take the punishment. We had been doing well even after that initial hit.”
Even then, rugby’s culture militated against Sheahan alerting those around him to his plight. Alan Quinlan would also go off that night but with a busted knee; his damage was plain to see.
Sheahan was able to mask his pain; sure, the blood injury that forced him from the field was clearly visible. His neck injury wasn’t. By making himself so publicly visible, he tried to hide the damage. In the long-term, it was a fool’s errand.
“I kept it to myself,” he says, the regret of the man now still jostling with the recklessness of the player then.
“You’re so focused, you’re so committed. You see it now with the concussion debate, and people are trying to blame the medics the whole time which is unfair. If a medic came on to me. . . you’re not making a rational decision.
“Now I look back and think that was crazy. But you’ve committed so much to yourself and your team-mates, you’d need to be carried off. So it’s always going to be tricky even in the modern game.”
Munster couldn’t prevent the inevitable that day, no more than Sheahan could as the weeks and months went on.
Sheahan was binned for stopping a certain try; he then watched agonisingly as Munster turned over a five-metre scrum but Anthony Foley and Tomas O’Leary messed up their own ball, allowing Sililo Martens to score; Robinson then added another when he streaked clear on turnover ball to score.
In all, Sheahan was removed from the fray on three occasions; as a blood sub, then binned, then tactically replaced by Jerry Flannery.
“The next week I’m stretched out in a Philadelphia Collar, watching ‘Fla’ win the man of the match award against Castres. Tough going. That’s sport. Happy we’ve won. But you’re out. Gone. And that’s that,” he says.
Trouble
“I knew after that match that I was seriously in trouble, I knew the neck was gone. The neurosurgeon told me after that I could have died.
“I don’t know if he was being dramatic. It was around the C1 area and they told me shortly later that I probably wouldn’t play again. There was a lot of talk about Quinny’s knee but for me it was the beginning of the end.”
Today, Sheahan is expecting twins, completing an IMI leadership degree and preparing for his latest Pendulum Summit, organised by his company Front Row, and featuring some of the most inspirational global figures led by Deepak Chopra.
Munster’s latest quest still demands his attention, though.
“They can’t afford to lose this one,” he says. “It’s a huge game for them because this is a more difficult competition.
“If they lose this weekend, they’re under all sorts of pressure and may have to then win in Saracens. In our time, you could probably leave one or two go.
“This Munster team have punched well above their weight in recent seasons.”
Munster, too, have a problem at hooker which is where this story began and, too, where the tale of Sheahan’s professional career began to end.
For more information on the Pendulum Summit, visit pendulumsummit.com
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