Well, maybe only a half-smile.

"Listening to some of the Gift Grub stuff on the bus was very funny, " he goes. "The sketches hammering all the lads for the ads they were doing, we got great craic out of that. And the ones doing Paulie were brilliant." Then a pause.

"Jesus, it sounds like a real dour trip if that's the best I can do for you, doesn't it?"

It doesn't quite sound like your gold standard excellent adventure, no. We're sitting in a hotel bar in Limerick, ostensibly here to talk Heineken Cup but conscious too that there's no point pretending the World Cup didn't happen. So we don't. It'd hardly be Flannery's style anyway.

For what it's worth, he has no scandal to report and says he's as clueless as everybody else as to what caused the walls of Ireland's World Cup to collapse in on themselves. He knows there are reviews and reports on their way and says that when they arrive, he'll be as curious as you will to see what they contain. "I'm dying to see what they say. How did 30 lads get out there and not perform? It can't be coincidence that everybody played below their best. I can't wait to hear what explanations people come up with. Because we sat there after games and racked our brains and tried to work out why this was all happening."

What he does know is that it didn't all stem from daily dust-ups or bust-ups or rampant cliques or chartered helicopters taking players to and from heroic drinking sessions in Fermanagh or basically whatever outlandish rumour you might have heard or been emailed or are having yourself.

He understands perfectly well how these things work, though. How they get started, how they get fed, how they become gospel.

"Well, people were looking for a reason for it all. It just doesn't make sense from the outside that a team that had been so good in the Six Nations could go out and play like we did against Namibia and Georgia. So of course people are going to think that there must be something going on behind the scenes.

But I can tell you, hand on heart, that there was none of that going on. Absolutely none of it. We were constantly pissed off because we weren't playing well but the enthusiasm to put it right was always there. There was nothing that I can pick out, even from this vantage point a few weeks after it, nothing that I can put my finger on and say, 'Well, there's the root of it all right there.' It would be great if we could."

How much of the rumourmill were you aware of?

"We were away from it a good bit and I only got some taste of the level of it when I came home. I'd get the odd text saying, 'Never mind all them f**kers and begrudgers . . . just play for yourselves.' And I'd be showing it to the rest of the lads and we'd be going, 'Jesus, what's going on back at home?' And then we found out about this email that was saying things like a few of the lads had gone on the piss in Enniskillen and that we were all sleeping with each other's wives and punching the heads off each other at training. It was just ridiculous.

"But look, I honestly and genuinely don't think that Irish people were building us up to knock us down. I know people have said that but I don't think it's true. Maybe I'm naive but I don't buy the idea that people built us up just so they could call us wankers when we lost. We went into town after the Argentinean game and I met up with a few mates and there were loads of Irish there and you were kind of almost waiting for somebody to come up and say something or have a go. But everybody that came over was so sound about it all and seemed to understand that it was killing us. Which was great in a way but in another, you'd nearly rather somebody called you a useless f**ker or whatever.

Instead, I'd be standing there going, 'Thanks very much, now', all the while feeling shit on the inside.

"If Joe Soap went over there and spent a lot of money . . . and I know he did because I've mates who went over and got raped for money because France is an expensive place . . .

but if Joe Soap was pissed off at how we performed, think how I felt. This is the World Cup. I've been gearing up to this ever since I've been playing rugby and to get over there and for it to be so disappointing was just. . . you were just gutted, you know? I understand that everyone was disappointed but, trust me, nobody feels worse than I do."

When he got back the day after the Argentina game, he and the others were given two and a half weeks off by Munster to go away and deal with it all. Flannery went to Munich for a couple of days but by the start of the following week, he was back in the gym doing weights and conditioning work. Part of it was because he'd have gone mad sitting at home or kicking his heels in his bar but mostly it was because he didn't want anyone in the Munster set-up to worry about the effect of what had happened in France spilling over.

"You kind of have to be a bit cold and a bit professional about it and distance yourself from the whole experience a bit. This has been a massive disappointment but you can't wallow. It wouldn't be fair on the rest of the Munster squad if you did. If we came back and brought World Cup baggage with us and were moping around the place, then how could we look the other lads in the eye? You have to draw a line and say to yourself that it's over and it's time to start playing really well for Munster.

Get your head down, work your ass off and do what you love doing.

"Because playing for Munster is a really special thing. I know that maybe comes across as a sound bite but I promise you it isn't. The boost you get coming back from a huge disappointment like the World Cup and having the chance to play for Munster again is massive. It's some feeling, unbelievable. I don't know if it's that way for absolutely everybody but for me it genuinely is. It comes down to things like being from Limerick and your dad being mad into Munster rugby and getting the opportunity to go out every week and impress your dad. If you came back from the World Cup with a chip on your shoulder because it didn't go how you wanted it to go, you'd be leaving all those people down."

He got back to a Munster squad that was still a fair distance away from where it wanted to be. For the second year in a row, they're facing into the Heineken Cup off the back of an indifferent beginning to the Magners League and even though the Munster public won't tie a rope around their ankles and drag them through the streets for that, it's a stone in Flannery's shoe all the same.

"I think writing off the Magners League is a bit of a wishywashy way of going about things. You've really got to perform in it because it brings a buzz to the squad and helps you get momentum going.

That's the important thing.

Like, you can always go and have these big Heineken Cup games and pull them out of the fire and it's brilliant but you know in your heart and soul that you're only papering over cracks if you're doing that.

Professional sport isn't about that, it's not pulling the big performance out of the bag against the odds. It's doing it week after week, doing it so that it's second nature.

"You could take a few club rugby players and throw them into a Heineken Cup match and they'd probably do okay as a one-off. The emotion of the thing, they'd be so up for it that it would carry them through. But that will only work the odd time. It's producing that on the days when there isn't such a sense of occasion around the whole thing that makes the step up easier to handle.

"I suppose we've been guilty of it in Munster over the years of having such a big clamour around the big Heineken Cup days, especially in Limerick.

We'll go out, play a massive game, come away with the win, enjoy the night in town and it's all great and then we might go out the following week and lose to Glasgow or someone. That's not really acceptable. That's how doubts fester in you. You're saying to yourself, 'Why did we win this game and then go and lose to these crowd?'" For all his talk of professional distance though, when the competition makes eyes at him he can still go weak at the knees. You won't meet many people more Limerick to the bone than Flannery and what the Heineken Cup has done and can do in the future for his city isn't lost on him at all.

"I think you have to be aware of the effect you can have on the people coming after you. It's very important that some young lad in Limerick can look at the Munster team and say to himself, 'Right, if I train hard and really go for this, then the structures are there for me to play for a team that a couple of seasons ago was the best in Europe without ever having to move out of Limerick or leave the people I love.' I played soccer when I was younger . . . I'm not saying I was good enough to make it or anything like that . . . but if you're a kid who's decent at soccer, it's basically an impossible dream that involves getting spotted by a scout, going through trials where you're one of 70 kids playing for five places and then spending a fair bit of your teenage years in England and probably still not making it. But that's not the case with this and we've got to keep it like that and treat it with respect."

As if there was a danger of it going any other way.