Junior Club Captain Update

Munster are back in pre-season training and raring to go. Tommy fills us in on whats happening:

Hi Junior members!

I'm in flying form after Tipperary's win yesterday in the All Ireland Semi Final – it always helps to get one over your Munster colleagues and it's good for bragging rights when we hit the gym session the next day, so now I just hope the lads go all the way.

It's full steam ahead for the squad for the new season and I'm just keeping the head down trying to get through preseason. Everyone is mad to get started and we kick-off against Gloucester this Saturday in a preseason game. We'll be up against our old coach Laurie Fisher this weekend – remember he looked a bit like Santa Claus – and he will have us well worked out so it'll be a tough encounter but good to get going.

Unfortunately I won't be involved as I was playing late into June with the Emerging Ireland tour in Romania, which was very successful, and there was a really strong representation from Munster so we had good craic. In the three weeks over there our down-time included a lot of coffees and milkshakes, and I'm not too sure how our new nutritionist Dr. Catherine Norton would feel about that!

We have been working hard since then though and a lot of work is done during the off-season. Yes, we get to take a holiday but we still have to make sure we're looking after ourselves keeping up the fitness levels and hitting the gym. I'm thankful of all that work now because I couldn't come back to preseason training without doing anything – it's tough enough as it is!

We had great fun on the Munster Race again this year and I'm sure I got to meet some of you along the way. I was down in Waterford and we went surfing on Tramore beach. I had my gopro camera with me and got some great shots of Killer (Dave Kilcoyne) wiping out and Dougs (Sean Dougall) showing off his new skills. It was a great experience for the whole squad, some lads got the chance to head up in a helicopter and others went cliff diving, and we all loved doing something different from the norm. We'll be back down in Waterford next week for our second preseason game against London Irish so we really hope to see you there!

Keep me posted on what you got up to for the summer and if you made it to one of our Munster Rugby camps around the province. I don't always have time to reply to emails but I read every single one and it's great to hear from you guys. The email address is juniorclub@munsterrugby.ie.

Talk to you again soon!

Up Tipp!

Tommy