Embarrassed Munster pay high price for complacency

Edinburgh 29 Munster 23

And so it was on Saturday that the inner military historian in Munster head coach Rob Penney emerged as he tried to come to terms with an embarrassing, self-inflicted defeat by his team in the Scottish capital.

Munster may have begun this Heineken Cup campaign on the road but the nature of their 29-23 defeat to the RaboDirect Pro12’s bottom of the table team could not be considered as anything other than a shock. Six wins in succession for the Irish province over Edinburgh, including a bonus-point victory in the league last month, had marked this trip to Murrayfield as the ideal place to plunder some away points and get the Pool 6 qualification process up and running heading into more testing challenges against Gloucester and Perpignan.