Munster's big-game attitude once again came to the fore and captain for the day Ronan O'Gara epitomised this stance more than any other, writes GERRY THORNLEY

A RED-LETTER day alright. Limerick was resplendent and bathed in sunshine, and wearing red appeared compulsory as the pre-match crowds congregated outside the Sin Bin and elsewhere in the long, lazy hot afternoon build-up. But it is always a well-versed rumour mill, and word of Paul O’Connell’s absence filtered through the concerned masses long before kick-off.

No harm in some ways though. In another hour of need, it straightened the umbilical cord between crowd and team. The Fieldswas ringing around the ground as a capacity crowd bursting to the seams with colour and noise tingled in anticipation of the teams' entry.

In the absence of Paul O’Connell, it’s not that Mick O’Driscoll isn’t a highly effective operator at lineout and restart time anyway, both Munster’s and the opposition’s, nor that he and the rest of a pack containing seven players in their 30s don’t have bucketloads of experience.

They have one or two others too. In particular, step forward one Ronan O’Gara. Not that he’d ever gone away of course. He didn’t need his midweek outpourings to remind us of that. The previous Friday against Leinster had been a statement of intent anyway. As if outlining his belief that the Irish management were wrong to drop him in the Six Nations, and revealing hints of paranoia against the Dublin media, he then inherited the captaincy. No bother to him. As with his famed interview before the Leicester quarter-final seven years ago, the more pressure the better. He thrives under it.

They also drew on their Heineken Cup DNA, formed as it was by Munster Cup days in their earlier years. “We have a cup mentality that brings out the best in us and that’s what we needed today,” said O’Gara. “I saw it in the fellahs faces in Perpignan and I saw it again today. It’s very hard, from a mental point of few. The game with Northampton here was a pool game – there was an out clause in that game so I don’t think we were at fever pitch.

“You’re meant to go week to week but there is something about the European Cup that excites. I suppose it has been the competition that has highlighted rugby in the country for the last 10 years and it just seems to get bigger and bigger every year and the support gets bigger. It’s a similar feeling to playing in those Munster club derbies, the European Cup you get that feeling. There obviously aren’t that many games. There has been some bond between Munster and the European Cup and that just gets stronger every year, deeper.”

A “relieved” Tony McGahan looked drained. “Especially coming off last week’s result, it’s been a big week for us and we prepared really well. I’m delighted for the players, I thought they were superb. I thought we needed a big game and to draw on everything we’ve had and we put that on the field this afternoon.

“We’d like to be playing like that every week but it’s just not possible in such a long season. We have a large group who are in and out of international rugby so we really need to make sure that there’s an even keel for it, but we also need to make sure we can take it up another level.”

From the day almost a year ago that the Lions’ squad was announced Munster have been feeling the ripple effects, but they are in the semi-finals of the competition they live and breath for, and second in the Magners League.

“It’s certainly been one of those seasons where we’ve been up and down in a number of performances,” said McGahan, “but we’ve created a wonderful opportunity at this stage and there’s still so much to play for in both competitions. So we need to make sure that we make the most of it.”

Regarding his captain, the Munster coach said: “Ronan’s been around for a long time and he’s been a fabulous player for a long time. He’s earned his place and he’s earned what he’s done through performances on the field, and we’re delighted that when he comes back he’s in tremendous form. I thought today you saw him at his best and I think that’s what great players do.”

It was instructive to hear Jim Malender and Bruce Reihana repeatedly refer to O’Gara more than any other player. “It was always going to be a big step-up, especially playing a Heineken Cup quarter-final,” said Reihana. “Munster have proven themselves year-in, year-out, for a long, long time now, they showed today how clinical you need to be in these sort of games. Ronan O’Gara controlled the game, we didn’t handle it very well, but we’ll learn from that. It takes errors, mistakes, before you get better.”

They’ll be back, but for now this was yet another of those quintessentially Munster days.