O’Connell hails team effort

AT KICK-OFF it was rocking, 30,325 mostly red-bedecked fans giving it hell; as the minutes, the seconds, wound exhaustingly down, such was the tension in this absorbing Heineken Cup semi-final that half an hour after the final whistle the Ricoh Arena was still twitching.

After the torrential half-time rain, what had begun as a short-sleeve rugby ball-flashing fest became a sleeves rolled-up dog-fight. In either set of conditions, however, Paul O’Connell and his multi-talented pack are well equipped to cope, and though the man-of-the-match crystal bauble went to the Munster captain, really it could have gone to any one of those forwards, a fact quickly acknowledged.

“Man-of-the-match is a funny thing, you can make one or two breaks, one or two carries and you get an award like that but you get other guys then like Hayes or Donners [O’Callaghan] who might clean out 20 rucks in a row and won’t get it.”