Munster must learn to deal with pressure

Munster may have fluffed their lines on the pitch on Saturday but the party line was rattled off effortlessly by those players wheeled out afterwards to explain the almost inexplicable manner of their loss to Scarlets on Lansdowne Road.

A disappointing end to a season of real promise. Beaten by a better team on the day. Didn’t make it easy for ourselves. Need to suck the loss up, regroup and return next season with an eye on building on the progress made.

You couldn’t argue with any of it, per se, but Billy Holland just couldn’t voice the script written for him when asked if all that good work banked in Rassie Erasmus’s first season in charge would act as a salve to the hurt over the summer.