Reds have no special rights, says Peter O’Mahony
Munster, twice winners of the Heineken Cup, meet old foes and four-times champions Toulouse on Saturday at Thomond Park in a fixture that will be both teams’ first appearance in the last eight of the continent’s premier club competition for three seasons.
The struggles of the past two campaigns, the first under the Champions Cup guise, have been left in the rear-view mirror and these two giants are back in the big time, each participating in a record 16th quarter-final at this level.
Yet after two failed pool campaigns in successive seasons, O’Mahony is refusing to take this weekend’s occasion as some sort of birthright for Munster and when it was put to him this week that the province was back where it belonged the skipper was quick to take issue.
“Not where we belong,” O’Mahony said.
“You don’t belong in a quarter-final. You’ve got to work bloody hard for it, and that’s what we’ve done.
“We’ve got another big week now to work hard and it doesn’t really matter if you lose at the weekend before. It’s knock-out rugby. It’s game over if you lose, and then it’s all for nothing.
"It is great to have a game back, but these are the games you want to be involved in because you want to remember them for good reasons, and that’s what we have to prepare for this week.”
Saturday’s clash with Toulouse is a rematch of their 2014 quarter-final, when the French giants played in Limerick for the first time and were blown away by a high-intensity home performance roared on by passionate Thomond Park crowd.
The 47-23 win sent Munster to Marseille for a semi-final against the defending champions Toulon, which O’Mahony watched from the Stade Velodrome dugout having dislocated his shoulder against Toulouse, and the 24-16 defeat was the province’s last involvement in the knockout rounds.
Two painful seasons in Europe followed in tough pools alongside Clermont and Saracens in 2014-15, followed by Leicester and Stade Francais, both featuring a disastrous home loss (to Clermont and Leicester) and heavy away defeat (at Saracens and Stade).
All of which left O’Mahony and the rest of the Munster squad having to watch the knockout rounds from their sofas.
“It was tough to watch,” O’Mahony said.
“They’re the games you grow up wanting to play in and then even more so when you become a professional rugby player, especially for the club you’ve always wanted to play for. To sit them out is tough.”
It is fitting that Toulouse, Munster’s 2008 final and twice semi-final opponents in 2000 and 2003, should be the opposition when the exile is ended but O’Mahony is not expecting a repeat of 2014 and is mindful of Munster’s only home quarter-final defeat, to Ulster in 2012.
“It’s always massive. There’s a huge amount of success between the two clubs. Two very proud clubs coming together and it’s always a great occasion. I don’t think they’re coming over here having anything to fear. It’s always a scalp to beat Munster in a quarter-final at Thomond.
"I know it’s only been done once but any team that comes over here in Europe they’ll be licking their lips and especially with a team like them, with their experience and the quality they have, their physicality, they’ll be looking to put in a big performance.”
As will Munster and with O’Mahony leading the home side, the flanker’s man of the match performance against England a fortnight ago has set the standard, though he admitted he is still inching his way back following the anterior cruciate ligament knee injury suffered in October 2015 which kept him sidelined for more than a year.
“I’ve still a bit to go, I’d say it’s two years before your knee is back feeling normal again. It doesn’t feel like the other one, but it’s getting there.
"I’m still tipping away, I’ve loads of rehab and prehab to do always, I keep on top of it and I’ll probably have that for the rest of my career.
"I haven’t damaged the other one - touch wood - but it’s funny then when you get a little niggle like I did at the start of the Six Nations, every other ache goes away other than your hamstring.
"It’s probably in your head, a lot of it, it’s probably something I’ve to learn to deal with a bit better, the brain side of things rather than the body which is probably fine. I’ve to get on with it.”
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