At the end, Marcus Horan lay flat out on the halfway line. After the teams formed the customary post-match corridors, Munster wearily dragged their knackered bodies across to the unshaded side of the raucous Estadio Anoeta, where the Red Army had been drenched in warm sunshine. Once again, they couldn't have given much more for the cause.

Then they vacated the premises, leaving the Biarritz players to walk a lap of honour to the rhythmic and deafening chanting of their supporters, beating a fierce din in a sea of red and white balloons. It was their party and it had somehow felt Munster were attempting to beat back not so much 15 opponents as remorseless ulterior forces.

Several hours before kick-off, the singing, chanting and blaring of car horns, the sun-drenched alfresco gatherings outside bars and on lawns, and the riotous mix of reds whetted the appetite with a rare sense of occasion.

Amid it all, Munster had looked dead and buried when 16-0 down at the break in this Basque cauldron. You couldn't even hear the Red Army from the far side of the pitch. Yet they summoned every last drop of energy they had in temperatures inching towards the high 20s.

Horan looked like the quickest prop on the planet, the veterans rolled back the years, David Wallace scored a vintage David Wallace try, Munster made Biarritz's defence look a little frayed and the Basques went so quiet that at one point The Fields of Athenry was clearly projected across the ground.

Alas, they fell even more tantalisingly close than the 19-10 scoreline suggests.

"Maybe we weren't patient enough but that goes with the territory," reflected coach Alan Gaffney. "Who knows what could have happened if one more score had got us to within seven (points); the game changes again. But I've got to give full credit to the boys. We asked for 100 per cent, and they gave 110, 120 per cent. I couldn't have asked for anything more than what they gave," he concluded, a hint of emotion in his throat.

It's a cliché used every week by coaches in all team sports, but it's rarely seemed more apt. In a dog-eared script, Munster probably lacked the pace to finish off openings and also the ball skills to create chances without recourse to multiple rucks. They still have to work so bloody hard for their yards, but man do they work bloody hard for them.

Biarritz perhaps aren't a bad bet to win the Cup now, given Munster had lost to the ultimate winners in four of the previous five years. But the Basque conquerors have now to negotiate Stade Français in a Parisian cauldron, while Leicester will entertain Toulouse, most probably at the Walker Stadium, in a colossal collision between two titans of European rugby.

Alas, for the first time in six years, no Irish side will be in the last four. Quel dommage! But that merely underlines how increasingly difficult it is becoming for them in this competition.

The last four are probably the best equipped financially, are ultra-ambitious and geared toward winning cups, have more overseas imports and are less subservient to their national teams.

On top of which Munster don't have rich sugar daddies like the heavyweight French teams do and unlike this expensively remodelled Biarritz side, whose backline veteran was the 28-year-old Nicolas Brusque, Munster had eight players in their 30s.

Still, Alan Gaffney sounded a defiant note in his last Heineken European Cup post-match press conference before returning to Australia to assist the Wallabies in the summer.

"I'm absolutely positive that Munster will be a force for years to come. People seem to be unaware of the players we're bringing through in the system. It's true guys are getting older, but if they're the best players then you keep playing them, even in three years from now. Age has got nothing to do with it. I'm very confident that Munster will be a force for many years to come."

Warriors to the end they've been, and perhaps it's not a final curtain call yet, for there simply isn't enough coming through to prompt wholesale revamping. But this weekend, and these last few weeks, have felt - if not like the end of an era - then suspiciously like the beginning of an end to an era.