Ireland are embarrassed

To Munster the glory, to Ireland the inglorious exit. Ireland took what they regarded as the elite half dozen players from the province and were last night deservedly beaten 26-19 by the Munster left-overs at Musgrave Park.

On the weekend that was in it, with Cork hoping to do the first leg of a GAA double, this was perhaps no more than an inevitable appetiser.

"It's not as if we haven't seen it before," commented the Irish manager Donal Lenihan, one of the few Corkonians in the crowd of 4,000-5,000 who didn't enjoy the experience. He was referring to previous Munster wins over Test opposition, and in the All Blacks and the Australians, they have beaten better than the nucleus of Ireland's World Cup reservists.

Hence, though they looked a little shook, the Irish management tried to put a phlegmatic face on an embarrassing night at the office. "I think Munster rose and the crowd rose as the game went on. Our fellas were a little bit flat. In the end we might have sneaked a draw but it wouldn't have been deserved," said Lenihan.

"But it's not a bad thing from our point of view. We were looking for a hard game. There was certainly a competitive nature to this game and I think that will stand to us in four weeks' time. We're philosophical about it."

"That was the sort of the game we wanted," concurred Warren Gatland. "In terms of being hard and physical. We're disappointed with the result, of course. It was their Test match and you could really see from the Munster effort that they were throwing their bodies on the line. And well done to them."

Munster coach Declan Kidney said: "It's all down to the players. I said during the week that it was down to the players and the players wanted it," which by extension implied that the Irish World Cup players didn't want it as much.

Meanwhile, Gordon D'Arcy is likely to be named today as a replacement for the injured Girvan Dempsey on Ireland's World Cup squad.