For the Ospreys, it was, like so many before them, one that got away. Join the club boys. But their innately good-humoured coach Lyn Jones took their defeat on the chin and, with typical defiance, spoke hopefully and eagerly of one day meeting and beating Munster in Thomond Park again. They remain, he admitted, something of a template for him and his side.
"We've got to take this lesson and next year I hope we draw Munster again. There's always a great welcome here. A good choir out there! Dunno where you got them from," he quipped, and maintained that Munster remain Cup contenders.
"I think so. The Munster pack of forwards are wise, they know how to influence the game and they do the right things at the right time," he said, citing Anthony Foley's reading of the scrums and Jason Spice's defending when scoring his try.
"Unlike a lot of other teams, Munster still have a lot of youth, still have a lot of time in their legs. They work hard to perfect large parts of their game.
"Their kicking game is very good, their set-piece is exceptional, one of the better lineout games in world rugby and their defence is up to scratch. Whether they can exert that at the top end, I don't see why not."
Admittedly, Munster lacked their customary clinicism when failing to press home a 17-7 lead with the wind behind them after the break.
So instead of turning the screw and then pushing on for the bonus point that would have left them in the driving seat for a 'home' quarter-final, ultimately they had to put their bodies on the line with a huge tackle-count in the final quarter. That had not been part of the script.
"What we ideally wanted to do
and what we agreed was that we would definitely use the corners, we would keep the ball in hand, but we would also play territory," admitted Munster coach Alan Gaffney. "There was no doubt about that but we didn't do it."
Lamenting the failure to score a third try in the third quarter, Gaffney commented: "We have a lot of plays which we forgot about there and we can't afford to do that. We've got to settle it, and reset the ball and start again, but we didn't do that."
This was far from vintage Munster. "We weren't delighted to be honest," admitted Paul O'Connell. "If we had continued to play like we did in the first half in the second, we would have been very happy, but we didn't. That's what we were talking about (afterwards), trying to put 80
minutes together and if we do that there aren't many teams who can live with us.
"We just didn't play in the second half, we tried to let the wind do it for us, kicked the ball away, gave the ball away with turnovers. That was a big problem for us.
"The defence was a big plus for us," he added, but in echoing the sentiments of Leinster captain Reggie Corrigan after their dramatic win in Bath, O'Connell added: "We need to play for 80 minutes if we're to go further in the competition."
The Munster lineout maul wasn't the source of points it had been recently, but O'Connell made the point that Munster used a lot of quick ball off the top of their lineout.
This, in turn, enabled Mike Mullins, in particular, to take the
ball up as Gaffney was fully vindicated in his backline reshuffle after Rob Henderson was ruled out, and indeed it paved the way for the breakthrough try when Denis Leamy was launched through the Ospreys' midfield.
"We didn't have many lineouts on their line, but that's the way it happened, so that's not disappointing at all. You need a few other strings to your bow as well."
With next Saturday's crunch encounter in Twickenham in mind, Gaffney admitted that his players were "physically bollixed" and after a long recovery pool session yesterday they would cut down this week's workload to three light sessions.
Gaffney is also hopeful that Henderson, ruled out with a non-displaced fracture of his cheekbone on Saturday, will be back in the equation.
Ulster coach Mark McCall had described Ulster's 12-match winning run in the Cup at Ravenhill as "a bit
of a noose around our necks", but while it may be a little bit of a double-edged sword for Munster, on maintaining their 21-match unbeaten run at Thomond Park for a 10th consecutive campaign, Gaffney observed:
"We don't regard it as any extra pressure, we just come here to play and still a plus as far as we're concerned, having the ability to play in Thomond Park."
Pool Four: How they stand
... ... P W D L F A BP P
Munster 5 4 0 1 103 64 2 18
Castres 5 3 1 1 146 101 2 16
N-S Ospreys 5 2 0 3 115 104 2 10
Harlequins 5 0 1 4 68 166 1 3
Remaining fixtures
Sat, Jan 15th: Neath-Swansea Ospreys v Castres; Harlequins v Munster (Twickenham).
Previous results
Munster 15 Harlequins 9; Castres 38 Ospreys 17; Harlequins 23 Castres 23; Ospreys 18 Munster 20; Castres 19 Munster 12; Ospreys 24 Harlequins 7; Harlequins 19 Ospreys 46; Munster 36 Castres 8; Munster 20, The Ospreys 10; Castres 58, Harlequins 13.
