Lion King feeling the pain of loss

IT MIGHT be pertinent now to return to this corresponding fixture three years ago, to the post-match press conference to be exact, held in a tent at the back of the former West Stand in Lansdowne Road.

There, one of the Munster players reminded us that a day would come, perhaps, when they’d could be facing the media as a side crushed by Leinster.

Three years on, it came to pass. Leinster, not just miffed by the lady-boy jibes attached to them over the years, channelled all the hurt from the 2006 semi-final defeat and all others to their greatest rivals down through the years into a performance of raw courage, unremitting energy and, above all else, pure desire.