RUGBY/Munster - 10 Edinburgh - 21: Disconcerting times for Munster. The injuries which sidelined Paul O'Connell beforehand and Ronan O'Gara early on are expected to heal in time for the opening defence of their Heineken European Cup crown.
More damaging will be the mental blow of a defeat in their Thomond Park citadel; their fourth out of six this season to leave them stranded in 10th place.
Most debilitating of all, for much of the night Munster looked like a side short of confidence, and this impression if anything grew as Edinburgh's stranglehold on the game intensified, despite a final-quarter rally. Even then, Munster looked a little guileless and even panicky in possession.
By the end you almost expected them to turn the ball over after a few phases. For much of the night, they were on the back foot, their defence regularly punctured by the width Edinburgh put on their attacks and their big, rumbling straight runners.
David Wallace ran well, Mick O'Driscoll was prominent, there were individual moments, their pack did generate one close-in try and at times it seemed they might have been better advised attacking closer in with pick-and-go drives or mauls. Like never before, a punctured pre-season and early schedule due to heavy Irish commitments, and a spate of injuries, have prevented them taking any momentum into Europe.
Afterwards, captain for the night Anthony Foley could scarcely conceal his concern. "The effort is there but the skill - even catching the ball - is letting us down. We're making errors and we're compounding this by racking up three or four of them on the bounce."
Further sources of concern were the withdrawal of O'Connell with a hip flexor/back spasm which he apparently sustained in training last Monday and, perhaps more worryingly still, the early departure of O'Gara.
O'Connell's absence was in part precautionary, with next week's little joust in Leicester in mind, but O'Gara required lengthy treatment before groggily returning to the fray briefly and then walking off with his right hand on his left shoulder.
Eoghan Hickey, formerly of UCD and released by Leinster, replaced the Ireland outhalf and landed a towering 50-metre penalty within three minutes of his arrival. By then too, with a stronger referee than Phil Fear, Munster might also have had an early penalty try when Mark Blair deliberately knocked on a try-scoring pass by Peter Stringer to Frankie Sheahan. Edinburgh repelled the resultant lineout drive and thereafter spent much of the half tackling.
Alas, Hickey's next act was to have a clearance kick charged down by ex-Ulster lock Matt Mustchin, and though he and Tomás O'Leary stopped the ex-Ulster lock short of the line, and Hickey got to his feet to then brilliantly hold Dougie Hall up over the line, it signalled a concerted spell of pressure which, despite inspired defending, culminated in Alasdair Dickinson scoring.
Edinburgh's quick recycling and width, stretching Munster and regularly puncturing their thin red line, were putting the home side on the back foot for long stretches. Hugo Southwell's big left boot was also finding vast tracts of territory with the wind behind the Scots, and Munster didn't help their cause by repeatedly losing the ball in contact or by forcing the pass.
Barry Murphy could have ended the early siege had he found touch off a fleeting turnover and he was one of several players culpable of handling errors. The difference was his came at a cost; flanker Alasdair Strokosch picked up from the ensuing ruck and attacked close-in, offloaded in the tackle from Peter Stringer for Chris Paterson to burst clear with a support trailer up the middle. Faced by Shaun Payne, Paterson chipped and gathered to score under the posts, then adding his second conversion for a 14-3 interval lead.
After the break, Edinburgh took up where they left off, recycling quickly and attacking close in, until Simon Webster took a sharp hard line off Phil Godman's inside pass to slice through the Munster defence and make it 21-3.
Munster needed a pick-me-up from somewhere, or a big play, and O'Callaghan provided it when snaffling that rarity wayward Edinburgh lineout ball. This was the cue for some close-in charges and heightened intensity from the pack, culminating in Denis Leamy scoring and Hickie converting.
With the wind also picking up, Munster spent the final quarter camped in Edinburgh territory. This reached its zenith with a mammoth, 40-metre maul which had the crowd in full voice, but the drives for the line which followed ended with a knock-on by Ian Dowling working a switch with Murphy.
It's a tad premature to call this a crisis, but the position could start becoming critical.
Scoring sequence: 13 mins: Hickey pen 3-0; 22: Dickinson try, Paterson con 3-7; 40: Paterson try, con 3-14; (half-time 3-14); 47: Webster try, Paterson con 3-21; 51: Leamy try, Hickey con 10-21
MUNSTER: S Payne; T O'Leary, B Murphy, T Halstead, I Dowling; R O'Gara, P Stringer; M Horan, F Sheahan, F Pucciariello; D O'Callaghan, M O'Driscoll; D Leamy, D Wallace, A Foley (capt). Replacements: E Hickey for O'Gara (10 mins), A Kyriacou for Sheahan, J Hayes for Pucciariello (both 54 mins), A Quinlan for Foley (72 mins), C Wyatt for O'Driscoll (76 mins). Unused: J Kelly, D Mateus.
EDINBURGH: H Southwell; C Paterson (capt), M Di Rollo, R Dewey, S Webster; P Godman; M Blair; A Jacobsen, D Hall, A Dickinson; M Mustchin, S Murray; A Strokosch, A MacDonald, D Callam. Replacements: C Smith for Dickinson, D Hodge for Paterson (both 55 mins), G Laidlaw for Blair (72 mins), S Cross for MacDonald (76 mins). Unused: A Kelly, D Hewett, F Pringle.
Referee: Phil Fear (WRU).
Home and away: Grounds for concern if quarter-final is reached
In the event of Leinster or Munster earning a home quarter-final in this season's Heineken European Cup, it looks virtually certain that no venue in Ireland would fulfil the necessary criterion of a minimum 20,000 capacity and therefore either or both would have to move the game to England.
Admittedly, such a scenario runs the risk of tempting fate, for to earn arguably the most lucrative game in the calendar, Leinster or Munster would have to achieve one of the top four seedings out of the 20 teams taking part. Nevertheless, both provincial hierarchies have been obliged to make contingency plans given Lansdowne Road will be closed, whether the redevelopment work has begun or not; the RDS will also be a redevelopment work in progress, while neither Thomond Park nor Donnybrook is simply big enough.
Although there will invariably be a clamour to have such a game kept in Ireland, especially if the alternative is to send a 30-40,000-strong Munster Red Army across the Irish Sea, logistically and politically it appears highly improbable that Croke Park or any other GAA venue would be made available.
The IRFU chief executive, Philip Browne, admitted as much yesterday when simply commenting: "Almost certainly such a game would have to played away. Croke Park is only available for the two internationals against France and England, and this is something that the CEOs of Munster and Leinster are well aware of and have done a fair degree of work in coming up with contingency plans."
Indeed, the Leinster CEO Mick Dawson admitted that a number of grounds have been sounded out, and at the moment the three likeliest destinations would be Madejski Stadium, the 24,000-capacity ground which is home to London Irish, Crystal Palace's football stadium Selhurst Park (capacity 26,000) and Leicester City's football ground the Walkers Stadium, which has a capacity of 30,000.
