AS GRAHAM ROWNTREE speaks about Munster’s regrets, captain Tadhg Beirne is coughing and spluttering beside him.
The Munster captain is in a bad way after an exhausting 80-minute effort in his side’s 24-14 defeat to Northampton in the Champions Cup round of 16.
When you realise that he was sick, Beirne’s brilliant performance against the Saints is even more impressive.
It turns out that Beirne is one of many Munster men who were sick this week. The second row actually picked up the bug before last weekend’s URC win over Cardiff, as did a handful of Rowntree’s squad.
Second row RG Synman was ruled out of today’s clash in Northampton due to illness, having seemingly suffered with a bad fever in the past fortnight, but others who did manage to play for Munster today found the going tough.
Scrum-half Craig Casey, who was apparently among the worst-hit by the bug, vomited on the pitch at Franklin’s Gardens after emerging for the second half. He played on until the 55th minute before making way for Conor Murray.
And though Munster have had a damaging habit of fading in the final quarter of games, the sickness in their camp can’t have helped today. They were already without a swathe of important players due to injuries and a suspension, so they needed every ounce of energy. The Saints finished over the top of them.
Not that Munster were blaming their defeat on players being sick. Rowntree said he was frustrated by his side’s errors as Northampton scored four tries to advance into the quarter-finals.
“I spoke to the lads afterwards about… I keep using this expression – ‘giving them presents, giving them freebies,’” said Rowntree.
“Some big moments there where they were that good on transition when we dropped the ball or made an error and they were gone. There were some big swings in the game where we could have scored a try if someone held a pass, we would have scored, but they won the ball back and a few phases later, they scored. So those errors, I thought we gifted them.
“I’m proud of our effort. We stuck in there, a proper game of rugby. It’s not been a straightforward week in terms of availability and illness. As you can hear from my man here, it’s not been the most straightforward but we rolled our sleeves up and got on with it for a big game against a great team.
“I’m proud of our effort but we’ll sit down and look at how we don’t give away those presents.”
Beirne was similarly reluctant to blame Munster’s loss on players being ill in the build-up.
“Look, people get sick, that’s part of life,” said Beirne. “You just get on with it.
“As Wig alluded to, there was a bit of sickness going around. That happens in team environments where we’re scrumming down against each other and all that kind of stuff.
“Lads are going to pick up bugs but that’s not the reason we lost today. We went out there, went toe-to-toe with Saints, they just got the upper hand. We’ll have to take that on the chin.”
The Ireland second row, who was outstanding for his team, felt Munster lost too many of the key moments.
“It was a battle, wasn’t it?” said Beirne. “You saw in the first half how tight it was and even in the second half, the game was on a knife edge for the majority of it.
“We go from having them in their 22 to all of a sudden they’re scoring. It’s moments like that we’ll look back on and be very frustrated with. But I can’t fault the lads’ effort. It was certainly a battle but we came out on the wrong side of it.”
Munster are out at the Round of 16 in the Champions Cup for the second season running and now must focus on retaining their URC title.
They will have a break next weekend but then face a two-game tour of South Africa to play the Bulls and the Lions.
“We will regroup this week and have a look at what we’re doing,” said Rowntree.
“I was just talking to Tadhg about what we will not do this week, rather than what we will do. We will regroup and then we’re down to South Africa for two weeks. Two huge games again in South Africa and we’ll get on with it.
“We’ll dust ourselves down, see what we can fix, and drive on.”
