Decision to go for late seven pointer ‘brainless and arrogant’

BRAINLESS and arrogant. That’s how Harlequins chief executive Mark Evans reacted to Munster’s decision to go for a late seven pointer instead of taking a probable three points through a penalty kick that would have put Saturday’s Heineken Cup clash out of his team’s reach.

"When they went for the corner, I thought you s****y bastards," said Evans. "It was a brainless decision.

"They're six points up going into the last 10 minutes and they kick for the corner. I wasn't very happy with that. I thought you arrogant so-and-sos. Rog is not a bad place kicker, is he, and it was 15 metres in. I thought it was a gimme."

In truth, the kick was far from that because it was into the teeth of a very strong and swirling wind and the rain was lashing down. However, at that point in the game, the chance of Munster scoring four tries and claiming a bonus point was extremely remote and even winning the match was in doubt. O'Gara and skipper Anthony Foley had the full support of coach Alan Gaffney for their decision with the number 10 pointing out the line-out has always been one of the strengths of the Munster side.

Whatever the merits and demerits of the decision, Evans and Harlequins had good reason to be satisfied with the way they came to Thomond Park to tough it out and did just that.

Not surprisingly, he wasn't happy with having three of his players sin-binned as against one Munsterman. Evans made no secret of his frustration at a forward pass decision by the nervy Welsh referee Hugh Watkins that might well have cost them a match winning try late on and also felt that "a few home town decisions" went against his side.

"We're gutted, we said all week we could win here but everybody had written us off," he said. "I was very encouraged by parts of our game and I felt we could have nicked it at the end. We had a lot of troubles and injuries in the front-row where Mike Worsley had to switch to the loose head side, which isn't easy and he gave Hayes a good seeing to. I thought Munster played really well in the first half. It was the most width I've seen them put on a game for a while.

"We were hanging on but it was one of those days, if you could stay in touch, you could always turn it.

"I've been to Thomond Park before. It's not an intimidating venue. It's a great venue. The crowd is very fair, they applaud you on to the pitch, they stay quiet for the kicks. It's not like going to Perpignan and places like that which are a bit intimidating. I think teams should raise their game when they come here because it's the kind of arena you want to play in, the sort of arena you want to compete in.

"The area where Munster are very strong is that they have a lot of good one-up ball carriers. They win a lot of collisions but the difference between the two halves was that they were making two or three yards in every collision in the first half but weren't doing so in the second."