Ciarán Kennedy Reports from Thomond Park

AFTER WATCHING MUNSTER’S Champions Cup season come to a screeching halt with a two-point loss at home to Castres, Clayton McMillan pored over a lengthy list of shortcomings which ultimately cost his team dearly at Thomond Park.

The New Zealander rued points left off the tee – Jack Crowley kicking two of five shots at goal – costly missed tackles, inaccuracies in attack, issues at the lineout and a late yellow card, all of which piled up to leave Munster coming up short against a Castres side who heartily celebrated a famous win in Limerick, having played some devasting rugby in a 31-29 victory.

Toulon’s 31-14 win at Gloucester tonight has since confirmed that Munster will drop into the Challenge Cup, with the province away from home in the round of 16 on the weekend of 3/4/5 April – with their opponents to be confirmed on Sunday evening.

“There wasn’t any one thing in particular (which cost us), McMillan said.

“I think we missed a couple of kicks at goal. We fell off a few tackles. We created a few opportunities and didn’t quite nail them. Missed a couple of lineouts. It’s the accumulation of all the little things that make all the difference in the end. They hurt us.”

While Munster outscored their visitors five tries to four, Castres made their moments count as they edged a breathless game in Limerick. Munster were left to reflect on too many moments that didn’t go their way.

“You win the game and they don’t seem as important as when you lose, but that’s the margins at this level of the game and games that have a lot riding on them.

“It’s being on the right side of those moments. They had a few more than us.”

Munster led by five points when Tom Farrell was yellow-carded in the 63rd minute, the centre sent to the bin by referee Matthew Carley for dropping his weight onto Christian Ambadiang. That moment flipped the game again, the French side scoring two tries through Geoffrey Palis and Christian Ambadiang – both excellently converted by Enzo Herve – during the period when Munster were down to 14 men.

“It’s never a position you want to put yourself in,” McMillan said. “We talked about at half time around: ‘Be urgent before you need to get desperate’. When it got out to nine points there late in the game, we saw an urgency about us and an accuracy about us that actually gave us an opportunity to get back in and score at the death and then give ourselves two minutes.

“I think in patches last week and this week I thought we played some of our better rugby, and especially attacking-wise created some opportunities, but just not nailing enough of them.

“The big disappointment for me and the worrying trend I guess is that we work really hard to score some points, but we give up points very quickly after scoring. “We don’t make it hard for opposition to have to come back and get points, and that’s the one worrying trend for me over the last three or four weeks.”