Destiny calls for men on a mission

It wasn't vintage Munster, if the truth be told, for the first 40 minutes at any rate. Sure, they'd had the inner belief in each other to hang in there but they'd lacked belief in their own abilities, according to Declan Kidney, and as Eddie Halvey also ventured, had shown Toulouse too much respect. With the interval though, in the tunnel, came an important passage in the game's psychological warfare.

Ever mindful of the mind games, for the match warm-up the Munster brains trust - and specifically Mick Galwey - had decreed that the squad should boldly go where few would dare to go, namely the shaded end of the pitch where the colourful Toulouse throngs were gathered so as to get the hostility over and done with before a ball was kicked in anger. But better followed during the break, and this time it came courtesy of Toulouse.

Rather than take the curiously long walk through the bowels of the Stade Lescure to the dressing-rooms in one corner, the Toulouse players flaked out in the cool shade of the tunnel. They were slumped on the ground, and the Munster players literally had to step around them and through them to make their way to the dressing-room. "They looked shattered," according to Keith Wood and Peter Clohessy, the latter revealing that it gave Munster a great lift.

What gave Munster particular heart from that off-pitch scenario was that Toulouse had won the toss and elected to play with the wind in the first-half, which broke with all video analysis of them according to Kidney. The wind was more significant than those of us in the stand had realised too, but it suggested to Munster that Toulouse had gambled on scoring early and often in that first-half.

Significantly too, despite being on the back foot for much of the time, Munster had stealthily scored the game's only try at that juncture. Shades of Stade de France and all that.

All of this tallied with another theory doing the rounds in the Munster dressing-room, namely that Munster had been more fearful of the sweltering, humid, high-20s conditions, and hence had prepared better for them. They had brought 19 and a half dozen 1.5 litre bottles of mineral water with them on Thursday, and had bought another nine dozen on Friday. By tea-time on Saturday, there were a handful to be consumed, and they would be. "Everybody drink another three litres of water," commanded Kidney.

Another turning point would follow six minutes after the resumption, according to Kidney, and again it was an indication of Toulouse's comparatively suspect mental strength. Following the sin binning of Mike Mullins, Toulouse opted to kick the three points from under the posts to make it 18-14 against opponents who would either be without an eighth forward or a seventh back at a scrum under the sticks. "In the modern game that's when you go for seven points," ventured Kidney.

For the remainder of Mullins' time on the sidelines, Munster actually outscored Toulouse by 30. Again shades of Paris. Down to 14, Munster simply rolled up their sleeves, David Wallace and co giving a tour de force for 10 minutes.

Not being wise after the event, but, by the time Mullins returned, anyone who has been privileged enough to follow this exceptional Munster lot through this campaign would have sensed they would pull through. All the more so when Lee Stensness coughed up the ball like a poor drunk in an alleyway with three men outside him and Peter Stringer, John Langford, Eddie Halvey and Dominic Crotty desperately fanning across the pitch, to go with Michel Marfaing's first-half miss from in front of the posts and Ronan O'Gara's post-interval penalty via the upright.

Sure enough, cometh the hour, cometh the men, and two minutes after the hour mark Munster's skill levels showed why they both deserved the win and earned it. And how did they go for it. From a scrum just outside their 22, there followed that 91 seconds of stunningly fluid rugby, travelling through 16 pairs of hands from Peter Stringer's opening delivery to Ronan O'Gara's touchdown. In between, there was O'Gara's skip pass to Mullins, his reverse pass for Crotty's lovely angle, the support from Jason Holland and John Kelly, brilliantly flipping the ball up like some sort of trapeze artist off the deck for Holland to launch Foley at Toulouse's heart. With Stringer all the while flinging it out on a plate O'Gara took it up next, and then Kelly flung out a beauty for Anthony Horgan to beat Cedric Desbrosse, Emile Ntamack and Alain Penaud.

Somehow, John Langford was next to the ruck after Halvey, and from Mullins' pass Crotty took on the responsibility to run at the bedraggled whites, fanning out desperately now themselves. "I'd thought about reaching out for Mikey's pass but decided to leave it alone," admitted O'Gara. As he'd done for John Hayes' first-half try, Crotty again beat one tackle and offloaded in the next. "I've never screamed louder or as long for a pass," revealed O'Gara, who joyously somersaulted between the posts. As good as this game gets.

Holland's swift intercept try ensured a killer double whammy. There was still some unnervingly long defending to do and after all the unofficial "time-outs" you couldn't grumble with Jim Fleming's additional stoppage time, though you could with one or two of the ceaseless Toulouse penalties and then the referee's positioning as Jerome Cazalbou sidestepped around him and a blinded Wallace.

Defence as much as anything had won it for them, though as Kidney had forewarned they would have to play more positively and for longer than they had done against Stade Francais. And they did, with that try. Try of the season? Most probably. Better than Stade de France? Possibly.

As bullishly rampant as his opposite number Christian Labit was (but the latter undermined all of that with a surfeit of indiscriminate rucking penalties against him) Wallace was awesome, while Halvey and Foley, considering they were in a backrow mostly on the back foot, weren't far behind. Stringer's decision-making, passing and work-rate were again top-notch, and the workload of the old warhorses up front, Peter Clohessy, John Langford and Mick Galwey had to be seen to be believed.

O'Gara's kicking was a little mixed, but his handling and running were sumptuous again, and the unsung Anthony Horgan had another fine game. But most of all it was another cumulative effort, another monster performance by Munster.

As the squad milked the moments with a second visit to their travelling hordes, you could only soak it up too. Kidney was lofted shoulder high, and shook his head vigorously and shyly. Yet his seeming one-man mission to have this country believe in its sporting natural resources, as he puts them, and stop being so harsh on each other is being given untold credibility by the belief he has instilled in his own players.

He and they are men on a mission. "Destiny calls 'em," reckoned Brian O'Brien afterwards. "You just can't define what's there," he added, nodding at the dressing-room. The toughest hurdle of all is still to come, and will be made harder as the bandwagon effect takes hold and optimism becomes frenzied. You'd think it couldn't get better than this but in three weeks' time there's every chance it will do.

Scoring sequence: 3 mins: O'Gara pen 0-3; 7: Marfaing pen 3-3; 10: Hayes try 3-8; 20: Marfaing pen 6-8; 31: Marfaing pen 9-8; 34: Marfaing pen 12-8; 38: O'Gara pen 12-11; 40: Ougier pen 15-11; 47: Marfaing pen 18-14; 56: O'Gara pen 18-17; 62: O'Gara try and conversion 18-24; 66: Holland try, O'Gara con 18-31; 85: Cazalbou try, Marfaing con 25-31.

TOULOUSE: S Ougier; E Ntamack, C Desbrosse, L Stensness, M Marfaing; A Penaud, J Cazalbou; C Califano, Y Bru, F Tournaire, F Pelous, F Belot (capt), D Lacroix, S Dispagne, C Labit. Replacements - M Lievrement for Lacroix (64 mins), P Bondouy for Desbrosse (68 mins), H Miorin for Dispagne (73 mins), L Esposito for Califano (73 mins).

MUNSTER: D Crotty; J Kelly, M Mullins, J Holland, A Horgan; R O'Gara, P Stringer; P Clohessy, K Wood, J Hayes, M Galwey (capt), J Langford, E Halvey, A Foley, D Wallace. Replacements - F Sheahan for Wood (halftime), M Horan for Hayes (73 mins), D O'Callaghan for Galwey (78 mins).

Referee: J Fleming (Scot).