ANTHONY FOLEY WAS at a loss to explain Munster’s 35-14 defeat to Connacht in Galway, as their hopes of qualifying for next season’s Champions Cup took a fresh blow.
The southern province now lie seventh in the Guinness Pro12, outside the qualification spots for the Champions Cup.
Munster raced into a 14-6 lead after 25 minutes in Galway, producing some impressive attacking rugby, but saw James Cronin and Billy Holland sin binned as Connacht scored two tries leading into half time.
Indeed, Munster had no reply as they failed to score again for the remainder of the game, Pat Lam’s men going on to record the bonus-point win.
“It’s hard to figure out what was going on,” said Foley post-match in Galway. “One thing led to another. A yellow card led to another yellow card, which led to a penalty try.
I’m surprised there wasn’t another yellow card, but that 10 minutes before half time and the 10 minutes after half time where we couldn’t peg them back were probably the crucial moments of the game.”
The scrum was a particularly damaging area for Munster throughout this defeat, with Cronin’s yellow card coming as a result of Connacht’s dominance in that area. Foley indicated that he was unhappy with Ben Whitehouse’s refereeing of the scrum, however, particularly the incident for which Cronin was sent to the sin bin.
“It was a key area of interpretation,” said Foley. “We obviously have the value of a replay, but it just seems that it’s two games away from home that Jamesie has been yellow-carded by Ben, so maybe that’s something to look at in the future.”
Asked to clarify that he felt the yellow card was harsh, Foley said:
“It was ridiculously so, it should have been our penalty. It’s not a case of being harsh, you could go through it all, but that’s life.”
The defeat leaves Munster scrambling to salvage a Champions Cup spot, with sixth-placed Edinburgh coming to Musgrave Park in Cork in a fortnight’s time.
“We’ve got to focus in our next game, on Edinburgh, and see what we can get out of that game, and make sure we focus all our resources on that to make sure we get a result,” said Foley.
We were up here to win the game. We went about that, I thought, in the right manner for a period of the game and then we obviously lost our way. Some of that was in our control, some of it wasn’t in our control. From that point of view, we need to look at Edinburgh and make sure we go about that in the right manner as well.”
The visit of the Scots to Cork has a play-off feel about it given that these sides are direct rivals for the sixth and final Champions Cup slot, but Foley insisted that it will be no different to every other game Munster have played in recent times.
“All our games for the last number of weeks have been treated as cup finals in terms of how we prepare and how we go about it. It’s important that our mindset is very similar and hopefully we get a rub of the green.”
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