Munster's painful lesson: If you don’t take your chances against Leinster, they will

This loss isn’t a killer for Munster’s season, far from it, but it poses some key questions that many thought had been answered in the Stade Marcel-Michelin

Munster man of the match Tadhg Beirne dejected as Leinster players celebrate at the full-time whistle. Picture: INPHO/Dan Sheridan

The snow whirling around Thomond Park before kickoff looked less like the PRO14 as it did something out of Game of Thrones. Winter is Coming? Nah, winter is very much here and it set the scene for a fascinating, bruising contest between Munster and Leinster. 

The stands were empty, of course, the latest lockdown saw to that, and you have to appreciate the irony. The doom-mongers have told us all for years that rotated sides would kill these games as spectacles and the first time in a long time that both sides wheeled out the big guns in Thomond Park ends up being behind closed doors.