You got the sense that Munster captain Tadhg Beirne was holding back his full-throated view after Toulon’s narrow win at Stade Félix Mayol.
Beirne accepted the final match-defining decision by English referee Karl Dickson, which handed Toulon fullback Marius Domon a straightforward kick at goal to give his side a match-winning lead with just minutes remaining.
A player infringed space at a breakdown. Dickson saw it, blew it and that was that at the waterfront in Toulon in Munster’s round three Champions Cp pool match.
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“Look, you’re in a tackle and he’s saying ‘release him’ but, like, you can’t just get out of the way of them,” said Beirne. “But there’s no point in arguing because once the decision is made, the decision is made.
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“We may agree or disagree, whatever, it doesn’t really matter at the end of the day. It’s not the reason we ended up losing the game.”
Coach Clayton McMillan also fell into the philosophical school of thinking and wasn’t about to hang out Dickson for his decision. Munster conceded 14 penalties.
“That’s a world-class referee there and you pick those guys to make the key calls,” he said. “He’ll be the one that will go away and review it and make his own decision around whether it was right or wrong.
“There were a couple of other penalties that we gave away farther up the field, especially from kick-offs, that I think were unnecessary. We’ll always turn the attention in on ourselves first and those were a couple of areas where we need to be better.
Aside from the frustration of coming so close but allowing the game to slip beyond their grasp, Beirne and McMillan spoke of the pride in their team’s performance.
Not many had believed Munster would make the match as uncomfortable for Toulon as they did. Few observers, after the poor outing against Ulster recently, thought Munster could come close to winning and yet they were ahead going into the final five minutes.
“Really proud,“ said McMillan. ”I would have been disappointed if we didn’t go down fighting or fire a shot after last week. It was a massive disappointment for everyone in our camp. We know we’re much better than that, and it was a lot better. We saw a lot better out there today and it’s a tough place to come and play.
“I thought the attitude of the guys all week has been first class and, as a result, we gave ourselves a chance, and that’s all we can ask for.”
McMillan was pleased with much of Munster’s play, with force of nature Edwin Edogbo putting in another fine shift in the secondrow.
The lock, who turned 23 just last month, showed his natural ability and was one of the players who looked comfortable dealing with the physical menace of the likes of Toulon number eight Zach Mercer and French lock Charles Ollivon.
“I keep getting told that he’s a real point of difference physically to what you’re probably accustomed to in Ireland,” said McMillan, who comes from New Zealand. “You’ve got to recognise that he’s 2½ years out of the game [because of injury] and we’ve been sort of drip-feeding him, a start here, 20, 30 minutes there.
“So, he’s going to get better and better. You want to see a big man carry and impose himself physically. His challenge is just to keep growing his fitness base and stack more of those moments.”
Munster, however, could be short of a scrumhalf for next weekend against Castres. Craig Casey injured his shoulder and Paddy Patterson was replaced before the match by Ethan Coughlan.
“Craig Casey’s got a shoulder which looks reasonably serious,” said McMillan. “I haven’t had the full diagnosis but he’s a bit of an Energizer bunny, so he’s showing good form in there at the moment, but we’ll get a scan. We’ll have a good look.”
Patterson as well?
“Yeah, he took a bang in the warm-up, just ran into one of our big forwards. He’s had a couple of bangs to the head, and he didn’t feel well.”
It was put to McMillan that Munster could be short next week
“Could be, yeah,” he said.
