Trevor Brennan's Diary: Restricted to the bench by injury as Toulouse get off to a winning start

Forty seven family and friends flew over last Friday for our Heineken European Cup opener against Llanelli, and a few other things. They arrived that morning and at around tea-time, I was in the team hotel when I got a phone call from one of them. He was lost and looking for directions to the De Danu pub.

A group of them had turned up at their hotel at 11am but the rooms weren't ready, so they went on a sight-seeing tour - of the pubs in Toulouse. Apparently they'd had a great sing-song in Place Capital, where they'd also played rugby with a miniature ball.

The squad had assembled that morning to take a coach to the hotel, returning to le stade at 3.45pm, then back to the hotel for dinner at 6pm. Most of the squad stayed in the team room to watch the Bourgoin-Glasgow game but I slipped out with Aidan McCullen and Yannick Nyanga to a little English bar which was showing the Sale-Munster game. Yannick speaks very good English and had more interest in that game. A good judge.

It was a typically gutsy, physical effort by Munster which deserved a little better, but a few handling errors let them down. In saying that, Sebastien Chabal, the Caveman, was igreat form and unstoppable going forward along with Andrew Sheridan, the prop.

On match day I had a lie-on before Alfie (Gareth Thomas) turned up. He had gone home to get a good night's sleep. He's done this for all the home games this year. He gets his wife Gemma to pick him up after dinner and she drops him back on the morning of the match, the reason being that when I snore it's like a train pulling out of Heuston Station.

I was telling Alfie that I was a bit offended, and asking him if it was really that bad. "Trevor, no offence mate, but I compare it to the new Airbus 380 taking off from Toulouse airport."

The previous evening I'd noticed Freddie Michalak wearing one of his latest sponsorship T-shirts; a red, rugbytec shirt with number eight and the Munster crest, along with M-U-N-S-T-E-R emblazoned on it in big letters. I didn't say anything then but the following day when we had a light run-out while everyone else was in Nike gear, Fred still had his Munster T-shirt on.

So I made a comment about it. "Oui, Trevor, chez toi, chez toi." So I smiled back and said: "Oui, Freddie, chez moi."

We got off to a good winning start against Llanelli, but it had its moments. We were down 6-0 after 15 or 20 minutes. Then Simon Easterby went off and they lost two of their props so we had uncontested scrums. Don't know whether that was a disadvantage or an advantage.

Some of the rugby we played was brilliant although, typically French, we tended to take our foot off the gas.

But, whenever we conceded a score we went back downfield immediately and scored once or twice ourselves.

There's still plenty of work to be done on our defence and our penalty count.

Frustratingly, I didn't get on, which is only the third European Cup match I haven't played in out of 28 since I came to Toulouse. I've had a calf injury since last Tuesday, nothing major. But it feels a bit like an Achilles tendon strain whenever I try to sprint. So the coach felt there was no need to risk putting me on as we were winning well and we've enough injuries.

I'd be hopeful of getting a start in the secondrow this week. I actually haven't started one game in the backrow yet this season, but I need to be training every day this week and I'm still not sure about this calf injury.

And what became of the 47 family and friends? About 90 per cent made it to the game, but two of them ended up in Lourdes and five or six of them got lost in town - doing some more sight-seeing - and missed the bus to the match.

My friend Chris Gallagher rang me on Monday morning to say thank you for a good weekend and told me a very funny story. Himself and a few friends ended up in a nightclub at about 6am on Sunday morning. He was one of those being picked up at the hotel at 8.30am on Sunday.

All he can remember is waking up in the middle of the night sitting on the toilet with a fag stuck in the corner of his mouth.

So he pulled up his boxers and went into the bedroom. Pulling back the bed sheets he noticed someone in it. He told this fella, who looked the spit of Jean-Claude Van Damme, to get out of his bed, but this French fella wasn't budging.

So he shouted across to his roommate, Johnny McGivern, to ask his help in getting this fella out of his bed. But the lump that pulled the bed clothes back in the other bed looked like Jean-Claude too.

"This is room 405, get out of my room," he shouted at the pair of them. The two lads, in broken English, explained to Chris that he was in room 409 and not 405, one of them going to the door, opening it and showing it to him, before wishing him a good night.

In his own room he found all his clothes on the bed. He must have gone back, got undressed, gone to bed, woken up, and somehow gone out the door, bounced off the wall a few times, walked into their room and gone to the toilet. It was one of those hotels where, if you didn't lock the doors from the inside, they could be opened without a key. Chris reckons he's lucky the two Jean-Claude Van Dammes didn't beat him up. I haven't laughed so much in a long time.

On Sunday myself, Paula, the two kids and Paddy the father-in-law went to the grand rond where we discovered a six-piece jazz band playing on a covered bandstand. It was a lovely sunny day and here was this 80-year-old man telling me that this was his favourite music from the 1930s and 40s, that he never thought he'd hear anything like it again, and it made his trip more memorable than any rugby match or anything else he'd seen in Toulouse.

Next Sunday we play Wasps in London. It's going to be a tough game, made even tougher by them losing to Edinburgh. It's also a repeat of the final two years ago, when Alain Rolland was also the referee. Déjà vu.

The final of two years ago is not something that's been mentioned, but it will be in the back of everyone's heads, and certain players may feel they'll have a point to prove.

My good friend William Servat went in for an operation on his neck yesterday and it looks like he'll miss the rest of the season. The club are now looking to sign a hooker who's played with the Auckland Blues.

The French squad for the autumn Tests was announced yesterday too, which created a stir around the club. But Guy Noves reminded everybody that the players' most important consideration this week was the Toulouse game against Wasps. He finished up by reminding the internationals that when they went off "on holidays" next week in camp with the international squad, the rest of us will be working hard, training five days a week.

No rest for us then.

(Trevor Brennan's regular Heineken European Cup column can be read on the ERC website, which is at www.ercrugby.com)

In an interview with Gerry Thornley