“We never discussed actually playing the way we did play, we just went that way.”

BEYOND the romance, the reality.

There’s a natural tendency to lean on the old Munster fall-backs on a morning like this. You can draw them around you like comfortable clothes: being written off. Having the bitterness. Producing when backs are to the wall.

Take a step back, though, and you can see beyond the fuzz to the hard-edged professionalism. Often post-match quotes can be boilerplate filler, but there were some interesting nuggets to be found if you looked closely after Munster’s win for the ages last Sunday.