Foley: the only way is up

TIME was when anyone who dismissed out of hand Munster’s chances of winning the Heineken Cup may have a Red Army to answer to.

By last night, no-one was too inclined to disagree, as the post mortems began and news of the quarter final draw filtered through. Harlequins coach Mark Evans said a mouthful when he observed that Munster had no “gas.” Yes, their line-out play was probably the best in the competition, their scrummaging powerful, their mauling clever and their defence superb - but none of these attributes could compensate for what he termed a “glaring” lack of pace.

Not the main issue, insisted Alan Gaffney and skipper Anthony Foley. “It’s nothing new for that observation to be made,” protested Gaffney. “It’s something that has been said over a long time, but lack of pace wasn’t the problem when we lost to Wasps last year and Toulouse the year before. It was because we didn’t reach our potential in the areas where we were strongest.”