Left with a lingering sense of what might have been

Clermont Auvergne 16 Munster 10

The sun was setting, not just on the Mediterranean coast but on the province’s season and maybe a career or two but amid the desolation in Montpellier as Heineken Cup favourites Clermont were pushed to the limit by a Munster outfit deemed a pale imitation of its predecessors, there can only be positives to be taken from this semi-final experience.

For 80 minutes the superstars of French rugby were made to fight tooth and nail to keep their ambitions of a Top 14-European double alive by a Munster side written off by the bookmakers as 6/1 outsiders in a two-horse race.

And having listened all week to an extensive list of Clermont’s strong points, impressive stats and the seemingly bottomless depth of talent, Munster went about bringing them down to the level of mere mortals in front of more than 25,000 of their passionate yellow and blue-clad supporters.

They may have still lost the game as the bookies foresaw but not in the way the pundits predicted.

This was no Caesar-like procession of a victorious army on the march to glory, riding roughshod over a weak and broken foe, but a stirring contest of almost equals the outcome of which was in doubt until the very last.

In the end it was Munster’s failure to capitalise on the chances they created rather than any decisive passage of play from the favourites that decided it. And that is what explains the deep disappointment felt by the players as they left the losing dressing room in the Saturday twilight.

The regret at failing to build on their bright start and a 3-0 lead after six minutes for longer than the three minutes it took for Clermont to steamroll up the other end and power over for a Napolioni Nalaga try, converted by Morgan Parra.

The frustration of seeing virtually every 50-50 decision at the breakdown and scrum going Clermont’s way and also Julien Bonnaire stealing Munster ball somewhat dubiously under his own posts on the stroke of half-time.

And the lingering sense of what might have been had Casey Laulala’s kick ahead over the try line, which caught Nalaga napping, not taken a wicked bounce and eluded both the former All Black or the excellent Felix Jones.

A Munster hand on the ball then, following on from Denis Hurley’s 59th-minute try as the sub winger latched onto a great Ronan O’Gara angled grubber to the corner, or a decent last-minute lineout in the other corner rather than the one that had Donnacha Ryan stretching backwards and flailing in mid-air, and it would have been Rob Penney’s side preparing for a Dublin final next month, not Clermont.

Those feelings will dissipate over time as the likes of Tommy O’Donnell, Peter O’Mahony, Dave Kilcoyne, Mike Sherry, Conor Murray and Simon Zebo – all significant contributors to the Munster effort on Saturday — look back on their first Heineken Cup semi-final experience and use it to forge successful careers.

The way they prevented Clermont from scoring for long periods, Morgan Parra scoring just three points between the 18th to the 48th minutes and nothing after that. How their barnstorming play had averaged 557 metres in the previous seven European games and were restricted to 276 on Saturday with Nalaga dropping from 96 metres made carrying in the quarter-final to 42, Lee Bryne from 96 to 49 and Sitiveni Sivivatu from 158 to below 40.

They might not have appreciated that on Saturday night but Penney did.

“They’re just a wonderful bunch of young men trying their hearts out for the jersey and for the province, and you can’t buy that sort of stuff,” the Munster head coach said.

“That’s got to come from a much deeper emotional well than a financial one, and it’s just wonderful to see them and it’s just heartbreaking for me to see the devastation in them coming into the changing room. But for a couple of little moments, just tiny things, that if they’d gone for us we would have been on the other side of the ledger looking at a great day in the Aviva.

“But that’s part of being a sportsman and part of the growth process of developing resilience, because the reality is these boys will be around for a while and play in a few more of these things hopefully. The grail is within their grasp and they’ve just got to keep fighting for it.”

Seeing the way Clermont bounced back from semi-final heartache of their own last season in that nail-biter against Leinster in Bordeaux to reach their first final 12 months later will also be instructional.

The trick for Penney now is not to follow the example of last season’s other losing semi-finalists, Edinburgh, who returned to type this season as the pool’s whipping boys, Michael Bradley losing his job in the process.

False dawn or a stepping stone to a long and glorious return to the European elite, Penney was not exactly gung-ho but he is optimistic.

“I think any time you’re at the pointy end of a competition and you’re competing and you’re in it right to the end and you could have won it, it adds a layer of resilience, a layer of understanding, and when you reflect on it and say ‘we didn’t do this quite so well, or that quite so well’, there’s another layer of learning going on.

“You have to say that Clermont side would beat most international sides. Certainly, without being derogatory, that Clermont side would probably beat France. So, this Munster group, and we’ve got some Irish internationals in there, of course, but against a really highly regarded international calibre side, could have stolen the day. You’ve got to be proud of that.”

ASM CLERMONT AUVERGNE: L Byrne; S Sivivatu, R King (S Nakaitaci, 63), W Fofana, N Nalaga; B James, M Parra; T Domingo (V Debaty, 61), B Kayser (T Paulo, 68), D Zirakashvili (C Ric, 77); J Cudmore (J Pierre, 39), N Hines; J Bonnaire (capt), J Bardy (A Lapandry, 57), D Chouly.

Replacements not used: L Radosavljevic, J-M Buttin.

MUNSTER: F Jones; K Earls (D Hurley, 50), C Laulala, J Downey, S Zebo; R O’Gara, C Murray; D Kilcoyne, M Sherry (D Varley, 57), BJ Botha, D Ryan, P O’Connell (capt); P O’Mahony, T O’Donnell, J Coughlan.

Replacements not used: W Du Preez, J Ryan, B Holland, P Butler, C Sheridan, I Keatley.

Referee: Nigel Owens (Wales).