Alan Quinlan was on OTB AM on Monday chatting about Munster rugby's future with big signings and also looking back at a few scraps from the past.
Quinlan was a famously abrasive character on the pitch and was apparently the same in training on occasion.
Friend of the show Ronan O'Gara and Quinlan came to blows in a particular training session where the flanker wasn't happy as he hadn't made the starting XV.
"I was coming back from injury," recalled the former Munster flanker, "and I was trying to lay down a marker. I was probably disrupting training a little bit.
"I had a little scuffle with ROG and he said to me I am where I am because I'm a useless blank-blank and that was the story and I kinda laughed at it.
"Normally when we have little tiffs and I'd be running around the field after him and trying to box the head off him. Even though we were always very close, I just laughed at this one.
"I went away laughing, thinking 'I haven't much of a comeback there.' He did apologise afterwards and we just got on with it.
"I think it happened a lot, certainly, in the environment I was in, where you'd just be shocked at times by some of the fellas who's end up fighting or rowing.
"They'd be very close and they's be either throwing insults at each other or trying to box the heads off each other and that's just part and parcel of it.
"It's part of the competitive nature, if you're not on the fifteen, it doesn't matter who is ahead of you, you just want to get in there. that makes for a good competitive nature in the squad.
Munster scuffles
Quinlan was asked how serious the scuffles were at Munster, were there ever punches thrown?
"Yeah, loads of times," says Quinlan. "There was one time, I think it's well documented, there was an eight on eight boxing match around 2000/01 in Thomond Park when we were training. The team was picked we were doing lineouts.
"One side are not happy not being on the team, the other side are happy. It started with Des Clohessy hitting his brother Peter Clohessy a punch and then it was an all-out scramble with punches flying everywhere.
"Niall O'Donovan was the forwards' coach at the time and I remember chatting to him afterwards he said it was great, he just sat back and folded his arms and said 'they're all men they can sort it out themselves' and it means we're up for the match at the weekend.
"There's punches thrown but you'd hope they wouldn't be connecting because of the power of some of the players, but some have connected over the years.
"There have been a few scraps, Marcus Horan and myself had one in Cork where it continued with some verbals in the car park afterwards."
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