No excuses from honest O’Gara
“I just think we didn’t perform for the 80 minutes that we were given the opportunity to perform. In that regard the better team won. You can talk and analyse as much as you like but you have 80 minutes to do your talking and we didn’t do it.
“That’s top level sport, and it’s very disappointing, obviously, but I wouldn’t be making excuses or anything. That’s where we are.
“That’s probably what hurts — you don’t know if you’d be good enough to win a competition this year, but with what had gone on, it would have been a good achievement by the group to get to Twickenham. At least you could feel proud of what you’d achieved.
“But at the minute, it’s six games out of six in the pool down the swannee and there’s a small bit of wondering where you go next.”
O’Gara conceded the fear factor surrounding Thomond Park has receded.
“Yeah, and I suppose that’s always going to be cyclical. What’s probably annoying for the more experienced, the older players on the team is that we haven’t achieved more before this season. We lost a final in 2000 and didn’t win one until 2006.
“If you rewind your emotions and thought processes back then, there were post-mortems and emotions back then as well. We’ve been knocking on the door a long, long time and the reality at the minute is probably that there are a few teams better than us in Europe. Not many, and we’re trying to hang on, but we need to do a bit more to compete and to win medals.”
The out-half pointed to the fact that Munster have had to use more than 50 players due to injuries, but he wasn’t using that as an excuse.
“We haven’t looked on injuries as a big issue this year and I still don’t. I think we made do with the best we had.
“Last Sunday we conceded a try that you can’t afford to concede at the quarter-final stage of a Heineken Cup and we left a minimum of two of four scoring opportunities on the pitch, which were very evident watching the game again.
“From that point of view, it makes it easy to accept in one way, though it doesn’t lessen the pain and the hurt. It’s not, ‘how did we lose to Ulster’ — it’s very obvious how we lost, to my mind.
“You can deal with 12-0, but you can’t give up a soft score like that in a quarter-final.”
O’Gara gives Ulster a fair chance of winning the European title: “I would yeah, you’d have to say they didn’t do much but they were still 19 points up against us.
“If you have a world-class kicker like Pienaar, that will push an extra 10% out of your forwards for work rate and just trying to get you penalties because I know from playing in teams, if you’ve a good kicker, your pack will put in more for you. That’s how you can get over the winning line. They were 19-0 up and there probably wasn’t much happening, so if you have that firepower it will stand to them.”
He acknowledged the performance of his opposite number, Ian Humphreys, last weekend.
“I’m older than him so I wouldn’t have played that much against him but I suppose the trait of all the Humphreys is that when they turn it on, they turn it on.
“He kind of did that the last day, in fairness to him. He looked very comfortable in Thomond Park, probably got confidence from the time Leicester came over and beat us. But I suppose that’s probably what he can do. Can he do it the next day? That’s the thing.
“He’s probably 30 and it’s all about consistency, which is probably what failed him in the past.”
For his part, O’Gara hopes the arrival next season of James Downey and Casey Lualua will help the men in red.
“I think the more quality you have in your squad, the better. We were probably a small backline the last day in terms of the 10-12-13 area anyway. I think these fellas give a different option — Earlsy [Keith Earls] was injured after about 60 minutes. Johne Murphy is on and your other option then is Ian Keatley, so it is more or less similar.
“What is crucial is the strength of your squad, not alone your 23, but I think what makes people win medals is what attitude your numbers 23 to 33 have in the squad.”
O’Gara admitted his mindset at present, in the aftermath of defeat, is another year gone. “That’s it in a nutshell. As I said, it was a big opportunity and on Saturday evening we’d have fancied getting to Twickenham. I’m not saying we’d have won there but you fancied getting there.
“So that’s disappointing, you don’t have a semi-final to look forward to, the build-up to a final if you got there. It’s gone, that’s the bottom line. You can’t do anything about it.”
