In the mixed zone between the respective dressing-rooms at the Stade Lille Metropole the fallout was, well, as mixed as it ever is on these occasions. Munster players aired their grievances, adamant they had been robbed of a legitimate try and quite possibly a three-pointer by Ronan O'Gara as well, while the French media and players congregated and grinned broadly, oblivious to any perceived wrongs across the way.

John O'Neill had no doubt he had correctly grounded the ball; O'Gara wondered whether he had in fact curled a second-half penalty inside the far upright. Anthony Foley, who had a good view of both incidents, concurred with each "scorer" and maintained that in the aftermath of O'Neill grounding the ball the officials "hadn't a clue what was going on".

The temptation to forgive the errant English officials and especially Steve Lander was largely resisted due to the memory of his less than distinguished record when it comes to big calls this season. The erroneous Newcastle line-out late on which effectively cost Harlequins the Tetley Bitter Cup final in Twickenham has been well documented, less so the awful decision at 18-all in Lansdowne Road last November to penalise Denis Hickie for not releasing in front of the South African posts as opposed to the Springbok forwards for climbing all over him.

How Declan Kidney can present such a phlegmatic public response to such decisions says wonders for his equilibrium. The players were comparatively livid, though not only with the crucial decisions which went against them. As much as the bad call, as Mick Galwey admitted, another below par performance and another one point defeat would grate just as much.

Nonetheless, while it's bad enough the officials got it wrong, it's arguably even worse the ERC tournament organisers didn't lend the occasion the benefit of a fourth official. An ERC spokesperson said the idea of a video referee for the competition had been rejected, "one of the reasons being because of the various different stadia. Some have the capacity to do it, others don't. It also involves the presence or otherwise of television".

Privately, one ERC official admitted the cost of video referees, if only for the knock-out stages (generally reckoned to be in the £15-20,000 bracket), was too prohibitive. For this semi-final there was no video referee, there was no scoreboard, most of the crowd watched from uncovered terracing, the soccer pitch was a sodden pudding of a surface (especially along the middle), the locale in the rainier north of France was at best diffident toward rugby, and both Lille itself and its airport were utterly incapable of hosting the 8,000-plus Munster invasion.

And there was also the matter of Christophe Dominici's sin-binning for a gratuitous stamp on Galwey's calf. To begin with, Stade played on with 15 men as Arthur Gomes came on at left wing and Richard Poulain went to full back before an outraged Christophe Juillet was called ashore.

Then White had to have Juillet removed from the pitch after the fourth official had initially allowed Stade to tactically replace their number eight. But worst of all, Dominici returned precisely eight minutes after being issued a yellow card.

That was scandalous. The tournament, the occasion, the players and the spectators all deserved better.