Remarkably, for a few minutes after the full-time whistle, the vastly outnumbered Red Army were singing louder than their hosts for the first time all day. Five minutes before the end the Yellow Army were in full voice as Clermont went in search of an attacking bonus point and the Fat Lady was also clearing her throat. Many a visiting team would have folded, and have tended to do, long before, but a 10 point salvo in the last five minutes, completed when Ian Keatley banged over a 45 metre penalty in overtime, contrived to engineer an unlikely bonus point which could yet prove invaluable.
Coupled with Saracens' failure to obtain a bonus point in beating Sale at home on Saturday, Keatley's last-ditch effort after an intercept try by Duncan Casey in the 75th minute keeps them within four points and three points of Clermont and Saracens respectively, and thus within touching distance, albeit they will have to beat both Saracens away and Sale at home in January.
Disappointed
“We’re disappointed but then you feel pride in terms of what they achieved when they were down and out,” said
Anthony Foley
in the cramped bowels of this charming and atmospheric Stade Marcel-Michelin.
“It could have been a bonus point win for them. You could see that when Sale were here, the floodgates opened and they put tries on them. But we flipped that around and got something out of it. There’s a lot to work on. We’re definitely not out of this group but we need a couple of massive performances in rounds five and six to get us back in.
"You've seen the side enough. They're not going to take a backward step. They'll stay and fight for anything they can get out of the game. Look, it's not ideal. We wanted four, we wanted to be the first Munster side to win here, we ended up with one. We're still in the competition but we need to be 100 per cent from here on in. We need to win our last two games to have any chance of qualifying."
Munster are still alive, and Foley still believes. “There are guys in that changing room that believe we can do it. I believe we can do it. I’ve been here a while and I’ve seen us come from worse situations. I remember getting on a plane from Perpignan in 2003 or maybe 2004 and it was a horrible place to be because we felt we were out of the competition. But we turned it around. We’ve been through this before. I think it’s about remaining composed and getting to a place where we can go to Saracens and try and beat them over there.”
About 4-5,000 supporters of both teams had congregated in Place de Jaude where the Christmas market was also in full swing, and marched out to the Stade Marcel-Michelin in joint song after home supporters decided to emulate their march from Dublin’s city centre to the RDS for the 2010 quarter-final for the first time in Clermont-Ferrand, and invited the visiting fans to join them.
Cracking occasion
The stadium was swarmed hours before the start, and a near 18,000 capacity crammed inside the ground in mild conditions, which were ideal for a cracker to go with a cracking occasion; which is what it was. Munster came with ambition and might easily have seen a dominant first 15 minutes – during which they had 85 per cent possession – rewarded with 10 or 13 points rather than six. With the promoted JJ Hanrahan on his full European debut giving them more width, they varied the point of attack more in the first 15 minutes here than in 80 the previous week.
“We did, but the same channel was available to us last week and didn’t avail of it for different reasons,” said Foley. “It wasn’t purely down to Denis (Hurley) or JJ (Hanrahan) being there. We would have seen other times last week when the ball could have got out to Denis out the back and doesn’t. Unfortunately they didn’t so we don’t know. We decided this week that we’d put JJ in there to be 100 per cent sure that ball would get out there and that materialised and we saw the space was that available to us.”
This was arguably the performance and result of another undistinguished weekend for the Irish teams in the revamped European Champions Cup which saw Ulster's hopes of qualification to the knock-out stages extinguished after a 22-13 defeat to the Scarlets in Llanelli, although credit to Connacht's kids for their win in Bayonne in the Challenge Cup.
Even compared to Leinster's scratchy 14-13 win over Harlequins in a contest which almost looked like a different sport, Munster's bonus point felt like the bigger achievement, albeit Leinster are best placed to qualify despite now trailing Harlequins on the head-to-head record by dint of scoring three tries to one over the two games.
Irresistible
Clermont were at times irresistible, and the best team never to win the Cup, again look the best team in it. Entering the last five minutes they had outscored Munster by three tries to nil and could easily have had an offensive bonus point themselves.
“They are a very good side, a very good squad. It’s just a matter of dealing with it when you get your moment. You have got to be clinical and unfortunately in the first few minutes we weren’t. We could have put a bit of panic into them and we didn’t.”
But not only did Munster cling on grimly as only they can, they kept playing with ambition too and were rewarded at the death. It was a monumental effort really when you consider the respective resources. Unlike Clermont’s expensively assembled squad – once capped All Black Mike Delaney was again an unused third choice outhalf and is reportedly on €25,000 per month. Predictably, such were their depleted resources – especially their depleted and depowered scrum – that as was the case last week, Munster scarcely delved into their bench.
