‘This will hurt for a long time’

MUNSTER coach Tony McGahan put as brave a face as possible on the outcome at Croke Park on Saturday but when asked how difficult it was to accept his side’s 25-6 Heineken Cup semi-final thrashing at the hands of their greatest rivals, he dropped his guard.

“Words couldn’t describe it,” he admitted. “To look at the players sitting there and seeing how despondent they are and how much it hurts, the pain etched on their faces, to know they have come up short in a competition that is very dear to Munster. There are good days and bad days and today we were second best. The performance, the scoreboard and losing to Leinster, the combination of all that certainly hurts.”

Given that they had been crowned Magners League champions a couple of days earlier, you might have thought it wouldn’t be all doom and gloom in the Munster dressing room. However, when that was put to skipper Paul O’Connell and out-half Ronan O’Gara, they looked decidedly uninterested to say the very least.