Fourth-placed Munster need to secure a draw at least against Amlin Challenge Cup finalists Cardiff at the Cardiff City Stadium this weekend in order to be sure to making it through to the inaugural play-offs later this month.
Fourth-placed Munster currently enjoy a four-point lead over both fifth-placed Cardiff and sixth-placed Edinburgh with just one round of regular season games to go.
Jerry Flannery admitted it had been devastating for Munster to lose out at the semi-final stage of the Heineken Cup for a second successive year.
Biarritz’s dominant second half performance helped the Top 14 side secure a thoroughly deserved 18-7 success at the Estadio Anoeta in San Sebastian on Sunday.
Flannery says the Munster players cannot afford to ‘loll around and feel sorry’ for themselves over the remainder of the season.
“For the rest of the season, it’s going to be difficult to raise ourselves for the Magners League, but that’s what we have to do. You can’t just loll around and feel sorry for yourself,” Flannery wrote in his rugby column on the Joe.ie.
“It’s not good enough saying you have to learn from this and come back, although that’s what we have to try to do. We’re lucky enough to have been competitive again and to get to the semi-final, but it’s just devastating to fall short.
It was late, one o’clock or so Sunday night-Monday morning, by the time we got back home after the game in San Sebastian. I got a couple of bangs and I have to get my ribs checked out, but the scars are more mental than anything else at this stage.
“It’ll take a few days for this kind of thing to kick in.
“Going home last (Sunday) night and getting up today (Monday), it hasn’t really sunk in yet, but knowing that there’s nothing there for us in Europe for the rest of the season is hard to take.
“With the way the economy is it’s unbelievable that the fans are still putting their hands in their pockets and come over to support us.
“You only have so many chances to win a Heineken Cup over the course of your career. When we won in 2006 you think you’ll have a load more chances to add to it. Then 2007 slipped by, we managed to win it again in 2008 but last year and now this season again, it’s very disappointing.
“A few people have mentioned about the structures that meant both ourselves and Leinster had away semi-finals against French sides, but you just have to take that as it is.
“If you’re going to win the Heineken Cup you’re going to have to win difficult games.
“Going back to 2008 we had to go away to Saracens, away to Gloucester. They were hard games on the road as well, but we won them and that’s what you’ve got to do to win it.”
Jerry Flannery admitted that Munster’s stuttering set-piece, both scrum and line-out, had contributed significantly to their downfall.
Flannery wrote: “We felt good coming in at half-time and just wanted to step it up in the second half. But our set-piece just didn’t function after that and we weren’t able to get any good ball. It was hard for us to build anything.
“We were kicking the ball to them and they either returned it to us or they kept it, so they seemed to have the ball all the time and we found it impossible to launch any attacks.
“Biarritz are a very well-drilled scrummaging unit and we have to be honest - they gave us a going-over and it’s one of the primary reasons we lost the game.
“We’ve got to hold our hands up. It’s very disappointing for us. I felt we were improving all the time as a scrummaging unit but in this game we just came up short and it cost us.”
Colm Kinsella
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment