Munster will turn their attention toward the URC lamenting an unfulfilled European campaign and a failure to reach the last four of the Champions Cup for the sixth season in a row, but perhaps feeling a little better about themselves than at this stage in previous years.
Regrets they’ll have a few for sure, after their mistakes were brutally punished in a 47-29 defeat by Bordeaux-Bègles on Saturday in the Stade Chaban-Delmas. While the memory of their epic win in La Rochelle seven days beforehand might, in time, be of some solace, Tadhg Beirne did not believe the exertions of that Round of 16 were a mitigating factor in their imperfect display in Bordeaux.
“No. I think it gave us a confidence in our ability and what we can do. We came here knowing it was going to be an unbelievably difficult game and it was going to take a serious performance and a much better performance than the La Rochelle game, and we didn’t do that.
Will Champions Cup blowouts come back to haunt Leinster?
“The first half, we will look back at that and be incredibly frustrated because we didn’t turn up like we said we were going to turn up and that’s the part that’s going to be disappointing.”
As the lineout caller and captain, Beirne accepted some of the blame for the damaging loss of nine of their 21 throws.
“In the first half, we just couldn’t hold on to the ball and I think that’s something that we’ll be really frustrated with because I think when we did hold on to the ball, we showed what we could do. Some forced offloads or knock-ons and then probably the thing that sticks out most is unfortunately our lineout didn’t function very well today and there’s lots of reasons for that, but you also have to give credit to Bordeaux in terms of how they defended it as well.
“Obviously I call the lineout so that’s going to be a thing that sticks out for me particularly, but overall you’ve got to just say the class of Bordeaux was there. You saw it from a lot of very good tries on turnover ball and all that, but we just came up short.
Munster sit fifth in a congested table, six points adrift of the Sharks and the top four, but they are mindful that the next eight teams are within six points of them. They host the Bulls, who sit third, seven points above them, in a crunch game next Saturday at Thomond Park.
“We’re in a difficult position in the URC as well,” said Beirne. “We’re in a must-win situation every game until the end of the season. We’ve been here for the last two seasons so we kind of know the feeling and we spoke in there that if we can just bottle up what we were doing in the last 20 minutes, holding on to the ball and playing the way we want to play, I think teams will find it difficult to keep up with us.
“That’s what we have to take from this game. We take the positives and we’ll figure out what learnings we have to do as well, but I think we can take a lot of positives from it as well and a new challenge next week in playing the Bulls. So we’ll have to regroup and all focus goes on the URC now ... unfortunately.”
