Munster pay for their sins

DRESS it up any way you like, one salient fact remains. Passion and spirit alone will never win the Heineken Cup for Munster or anybody else and there can be few complaints at the outcome of yesterday’s Lansdowne Road thriller.

It's no consolation to Munster that they played their part in making this a game to remember, rugby at its pulsating best, contested in glorious weather in front of a colourful and wildly partisan full house.

Shaun Edwards, a rugby league legend and nowadays assistant coach of London Wasps, went so far as to declare it greatest game he had seen in either code. He might well say that given the result, but he's right, it was an epic battle from which his side deservedly emerged with the spoils.