Mission accomplished – just

Munster 12 Northampton 9

Munster will be more than relieved to have clinched a home Heineken Cup quarter-final but Northampton proved at Thomond Park last night that they are made of stern stuff.

In the end, they settled for a bonus point after losing by four penalties to three and will now need results to fall their way over the next two days if they are to reach the last eight.

For Munster, it’s a case of mission accomplished. However this was a nervy performance riddled with too many mistakes for the liking of the Red Army who spent much of a bitterly cold, foggy night sitting on the edge of their seats.

Northampton director of rugby Jim Mallinder said beforehand that they were coming to the Limerick fortress to win and they would have done so were it not for the sterling defence put up against them during a crucial and ultimately decisive nine minute spell midway through the second half.

Ronan O’Gara had just kicked Munster 9-6 in front on 56 minutes when Tomás O’Leary had a kick charged down just outside his own line.

The first scrum was indecisive but when they went down a second time, Munster retreated and French referee Romain Poite stepped in to send Paul O’Connell to the bin.

Northampton then went for the jugular but it was then that the heart and spirit that have carried Munster so far over the years came into play.

Alan Quinlan moved up to the second-row and with Donncha O’Callaghan having earlier retired injured, it looked a certainty that the Saints were sure of a seven pointer.

Instead, the makeshift Munster scrum did the seemingly impossible, somehow getting in a nudge on Lion Euan Murray, the giant Soane Tonga’uiha and Dylan Hartley and enabling substitute hooker Damien Varley to pull off the most unlikely and invaluable of strikes against the head.

There was still a lot of work to be done and it was far from blemish free.

But if only for their gallantry at that set-piece, Munster deserved to claim the spoils. Quinlan started off the game at whirlwind pace and never relented for the full 80 minutes.

The foggy Thomond Park air was reflected by the first half exchanges. The opening 10 minutes or so were a session of Garryowens, the first by O’Leary that was dropped by the Saints right winger.

As if taking their lead from this error, the rival out-halves and full-backs indulged in aerial ping-pong, now one of the most familiar if most irritating tactics of the modern game.

Munster were prepared to trust their backs more than the visitors but there were few if any line breaks.

From an early stage, Poite was arousing the anger of the Red Army with decisions on at least two occasions that could have had a decisive influence on the outcome.

Munster were leading by an early O’Gara penalty when Shane Geraghty launched a kick from nine metres inside his own half that ran all the way over the dead ball line at the other end.

The resultant scrum, however, was set on the halfway line with Munster awarded a penalty from the set piece. O’Gara’s shot at goal landed well short but it would almost certainly have been a different matter had he been kicking from the right spot.

A woefully high tackle by Geraghty on Warwick also went unpunished and Bruce Reihana levelled the scoring with a fine kick from 48 metres on the half. Munster’s troubles at both the line-out and scrummage was costing them dearly but to their credit they piled on the pressure approaching half time and after O’Connell was prevented from getting his pass away from the base of a ruck by a blatantly offside Saints player O’Gara bisected the posts with a perfect kick.

A combination of an inordinately high number of Munster errors and further strange calls by the referee meant that the second half began in anything but a positive note for the home side.

On 49 minutes, Geraghty was presented with a shot at goal but he scuffed it so badly that the ball hardly left the ground! It wasn’t getting any better, however. Poite missed a glaring forward pass as Northampton maintained the momentum and from the same attack correctly awarded them a penalty from point blank range when Munster wandered offside. Geraghty popped it over and with 55 minutes gone Donncha O’Callaghan had to retire injured and made way for Donnacha Ryan.

A few moments later, O’Gara landed his third penalty and it was then that all hell broke loose with the yellow carding of O’Connell but Munster held out just when it looked as if their citadel had to fall.

MUNSTER: P Warwick: D Howlett, K Earls, J de Villiers, I. Dowling; R O’Gara, T O’Leary; W du Preez, D Fogarty, J Hayes, D O’Callaghan, P O’Connell [capt], A Quinlan, N Ronan, D Wallace.

Replacements: D. Ryan for O’Callaghan and D. Varley for Fogarty, both 55; M. Horan for du Preez 67; T. Buckley for Hayes 70.

NORTHAMPTON SAINTS: B Foden; C Ashton, J Clarke, J Downey, B Reihana; S Geraghty, L Dickson; S Tongauiha, D Hartley [capt], E Murray, I Fernandez Lobbe, J Kruger, C Lawes, P Dowson, R Wilson.

Replacements: C. Day for Fernandez Lobbe 57; S. Myler for Geraghty and N. Best for Lawes 72.

Referee: Romain Poite (France).