Tadhg Beirne: 'We’re in a must-win situation every game until the end of the season'

Beirne agreed with Ian Costello that Munster’s hard-fought 25-24 victory at La Rochelle had given his side energy and belief rather than depleting mental and physical energy levels.

POSITIVES:Munster's Niall Scannell, Tadhg Beirne and Alex Kendellen dejected after the game. Pic:©INPHO/Billy Stickland

Tadhg Beirne urged his Munster side to take the positives from the second half of their Champions Cup quarter-final into the final four “must-win” games of the URC regular season.

Munster exited Europe with a 47-29 last-eight defeat at Bordeaux-Bègles on Saturday but left a 32,215 sold out Stade Chaban-Delmas satisfied with the resolve shown to rally from 29-3 down after 33 minutes to score four tries against the competition’s top seeds.

It was a valiant if flawed performance having conceded four tries with only a Jack Crowley penalty in reply as hopes of a repeat of the previous week’s Round of 16 victory at La Rochelle faded on their return to France.

Yet with a big URC game looming against the Bulls at Thomond Park this Saturday, the Munster captain said the squad could take confidence for the rest of the campaign having gone toe to toe with two Top 14 heavyweights over the last two weekends.

Munster’s derby win at Connacht preceded the trip to La Rochelle and consolidated their fifth place in the league standings with four rounds remaining before the play-offs. Yet it remains a crowded field for the top-eight qualifying positions and Beirne acknowledged there was little room for slip-ups.

“We’re in a difficult position in the URC as well. We’re in a must-win situation every game until the end of the season.

“We’ve been here for the last two seasons so we kind of know the feeling and we spoke in there that if we can just bottle up what we were doing in the last 20 minutes; holding onto the ball and playing the way we want to play, I think teams will find it difficult to keep up with us.

“That’s what we have to take from this game. We take the positives and we’ll figure out what learnings we have to do as well, but I think we can take a lot of positives from it as well and a new challenge next week in playing the Bulls so we’ll have to regroup and all focus goes on the URC now…unfortunately.” 

Interim head coach Ian Costello also looked to turn the page from defeat in Europe to a strong URC finish.

“We’ve one focus, finish as high up the league as possible, make sure we’re in the play-offs, that’s the first priority,” Costello said. "We’ve got massive games left.

“We’ve worked our way up from 13th to fifth and it’s making sure now over the next couple of weeks, the Bulls and Cardiff, we’ve two performances and two results. Unfortunately we don’t have a semi-final, that will give us a chance to take a break and really hit the last couple of games of the season as well.

“The URC is huge for as well, it’s just very disappointing to go out of a competition that we love so much.” 

Beirne agreed with Costello that Munster’s hard-fought 25-24 victory at La Rochelle had given his side energy and belief rather than depleting mental and physical energy levels.

“No. I think it gave us a confidence in our ability and what we can do. We came here knowing it was going to be an unbelievably difficult game and it was going to take a serious performance and a much better performance than the La Rochelle game, and we didn’t do that.

“The first-half, we will look back at that and be incredibly frustrated because we didn’t turn up like we said we were going to turn up and that’s the part that’s going to be disappointed.”