Andi Kyriacou only spent one season at Munster as a player, but it made a lasting impact.
It wouldn't have been hard to be sucked in by Munster at that time. The province's new forwards coach was just 23 years old when he was recruited on a season-long loan from Saracens back in 2006.
When the hooker arrived, it was off the back of Munster's Heineken Cup breakthrough. Competing with Jerry Flannery, Denis Fogarty and Frankie Sheahan at hooker, and sharing a pack with the likes of John Hayes, Paul O'Connell, Donncha O'Callaghan, David Wallace and Anthony Foley, Kyriacou quickly learned about the standards that needed to be met.
"One thing that immediately hit me was the accountability from the players and how tough they were on each other in training, not accepting things that may have been accepted in the place I was at," he said, looking back on his time at the province.
"It was just a phenomenal learning experience. I got a lot of opportunities which is always great. I made lifelong friends, it's been great to come back and reconnect with people straight away, lads who are still in the game and the lads who have left the game.
"It is a great place. I had a great year when I was over here. I remember getting the opportunity, I had literally just moved into my new house down in London with my wife when the opportunity came up so I said 'see you later', and off we went".
A native of England, Kyriacou had been Irish qualified from birth, and after returning to Saracens following his Munster loan, he came back to Ireland in 2009 where he spent three seasons at Ulster, playing more than 50 times in total.
Having moved to Cardiff in the summer of 2012, a back injury saw him forced into retirement a year later at the age of just 30, but while his playing days were cut short, it led him down the coaching path which eventually saw him return to Ireland in 2021, initially joining Munster's academy set-up, before being promoted to forwards coach this season.
"The four years in total that I spent over here as a player, I just had the best time. It's such a great country. Irish rugby in general at the moment is in a great place.
"So in terms of, specifically, the opportunity here in Munster, coming back, I know the place, I know the people, the values that they have and that the club has.
"I had to hit the interview obviously with Peter Smyth and David Nucifora. Look, it all kind of went well and I got offered the position.
"From that point on, there was no decision to be made. I wanted to be back in Ireland for a number of years."
While part of the academy system last season, Kyriacou still found himself closely involved with the senior team, in particular for the now famous Champions Cup opener against Wasps last December, when he and Ian Costello were tasked with leading the coaching following the Covid-hit tour of South Africa.
And after several months working with Munster's young players around long-term development, he was thrust back into the 'week-to-week' environment of senior team rugby.
"It wasn't so much an eye-opener because I’d been doing team stuff for a while with Cardiff, Russia, Sale, and then Nottingham, so I’m used to that week-to-week performance-based coaching. It was just we’d gone hard for that three or four months in that development world.
"It was actually quite a nice break to move back into building a team for… we had two weeks at it as well before the game so it was just a nice couple of weeks where we worked well with the senior guys who came back from the Ireland camp and they were unbelievable. They were incredible with the young guys, how they helped them. It was like we had ten other coaches on the field.
"They were fantastic and it was a great experience all together," he added.
He made enough of an impact that he was promoted to the role of forwards coach when Graham Rowntree succeeded Johann van Graan as head coach this summer, joining two more former Munster players, Mike Prendergast and Denis Leamy in the backroom team.
While Leamy was a key part of the Munster side Kyriacou played on, Prendergast had departed the province for Bourgoin by the time the hooker arrived in Limerick, although their paths did cross that season when the sides met in the Heineken Cup.
The coaching team are gelling well, he says, in spite of the rustiness shown in last week's BKT United Rugby Championship defeat to Cardiff, but they return to Wales this Sunday to take on a Dragons side who were hammered 44-6 by Edinburgh.
"We've got a very good relationship from last year and he’s [Rowntree] given me the freedom to go and do what I want to do, which is great. It’s nice to have that trust.
"We talk a lot, it’s very open and we all want this Munster pack to move on and move forward, get that fear factor about it again.
"They’re obviously very talented coaches, got great ideas and very much driven in and around non-negotiables. That accountability is something we definitely need and they’re driving on, they’re driving their areas on at a rate of knots and the lads are all over it, the lads love it.
"It’s been great to work with them.
"Because things are new to the lads, and we are training in a completely different way, there is going to be an adaptation period.
"It's on all of us, players and coaches, to try and accelerate that as much as we can. It might take a period of time, we don't know how long that will be.
"But we just keep going after our performance in training and improving that. Then that transfer from the on-field training in the week to the weekend against whoever we are playing. We are prepping well. So, we just keep going after those performances."
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