Paul O'Connell loved Roy Keane and says his Munster team were on the same wavelength as the Manchester United legend - but jokes that Keane might not have thought that was the case at times.
At the height of his fame at United, Keane attended Munster games when he could and took up several invitations to talk to the Reds squad.
"Unbelievably nice guy, very articulate, you could identify with everything he said, he wanted to win and wanted people to have the same drive as him and I always really enjoyed him," O'Connell told the Captains with Sam Warburton podcast.
"He came and spoke to us in Munster one time, I think we were playing Sale the next day but a few guys were playing Monopoly when he arrived in and they stayed sitting around the Monopoly table because they didn't want anyone to steal anything.
"I think he thought they continued to play (as he spoke) and he was a little bit insulted by that!
"We used to carb load the night before a game and Declan Kidney would say, sometimes a little of what's bad for you is good for you.
"So we were allowed have pizzas the night before a game and he was going through a real phase at the time.
"He was talking about his body fat and I don't think he was eating any red meat, his body fat was down to 4%, it was off the charts stuff.
"And as he was talking about all this stuff, 30 pizzas arrived into the room!
"But he was talking our language, it was everything that we believed we stood for."
O'Connell is a massive admirer of what Keane achieved at Old Trafford.
"He wasn't the best player because he had one or two moments of brilliance, he was their best player because he was this relentless, driven player - this relentless, driven leader that didn't accept low standards off anyone," said the Limerick man.
"He wouldn't have come and spoken to us a few times at Munster and a lot of the leaders in Munster, we would have actually been copying Roy Keane.
"And it was brilliant in some ways because we were (the squad) such good friends.
"It was pre-social media, it was at a time when there was probably a lot more drinking going on as well - there was less of a camera on you and what you did outside the game, so we were very, very close friends.
"And because of that we could be really, really tough on each other.
"We felt that's what Roy Keane did, we felt that's what we had to do and it was a brilliant way to because we knew each other so well.
"I met him personally a few times. It's funny, when he was doing his FIFA badges, Ireland were playing New Zealand and they had to visit another team, and rather than visit the Irish rugby team, he went and stayed for a week with the New Zealand team!
"We went for dinner with him, myself and a few of the other lads and I remember he told Ronan O'Gara, 'listen, I can't tell you anything they were saying in camp but I can tell you one thing, they'll be coming after you' - which every team did!"
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