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16th August 2019
04:02pm BST
"I tell you, we did that sh** with Munster, years ago. It was crazy... "Yeah Quinny, Paulie, all the lads. I think what Munster wanted to do was ramp up the competition within the squad and make it much more niggly. "They split the squad into four, so there was a grey team, an orange team, a blue team and maybe a red team. Split it up so we had a even mix of forwards and backs. They ended up by saying, 'We're going to have a King of the Ring'. "We were at a training camp in Portugal and they put a big circle around and put everyone in and said, 'Who is going to be last man in there?' "Honestly, man, you had to get people out of the circle. We hadn't really thought about [strategies] but after a while we started figuring it out. You're thinking, 'Right, that's John Hayes. I'm not going to get him out'. "But it ended up that John Hayes might be throwing someone out at the edge and you'd run in, drop your shoulder and hit him in the lower back to get him out. "Then it ended up with three guys on one guy. It was like prison, man. They were running after him. "I think Sammy Tuitupou won it. He was an animal in there, man. Very, very powerful."
Tuitupou only played one season for Munster - 2010/11 - but he made one hell of an impression.
In a Munster squad that contained the fearsome likes of Hayes, Paul O'Connell, Alan Quinlan, Donnacha Ryan and Tony Buckley, the 5-foot-9 Kiwi was King of the Ring, last man standing. A somewhat surprising victor but any lad that can lift up Devin Toner like a sack of spuds must have fancied his fighting chances.
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