European Cup Pool 4/Munster - 36 Castres - 8: Rule number one of the Heineken Cup: don't get Munster's gander up. You'd have thought that Castres would have been more au fait with this basic tenet of European rugby than anyone else given no one has played Munster more in the history of the competition, but, still, they had to go and do it again.
When Munster are in this mood, when a capacity 14,000 Thomond Park crowd have been worked up into a frenzy by a defeat the week before and by the backs-to-the-wall position their team had been placed, all the more so if it comes with a sense that the visitors had resorted to some dastardly no good, there is almost a primeval force about what unfolds. It is simply unstoppable.
Gloucester, on two separate occasions, are the most obvious and recent examples, but there have been other ones, dating back to Harlequins and Perpignan, and, of course, Leicester at their impregnable Welford Road fortress in vengeance for the Back-handed cup final defeat the year before.
The bottom line is that nobody beats Munster twice - not in a row anyway. Professional pride in their own performance is the ultimate motive, a yearning inner desire to put to rights a defeat and an under-par performance.
However much Munster would have felt sleighted for criticisms that they had been outmuscled the week before in Castres, it would have been nothing compared to their week-long self-criticism.
Nonetheless, it helps if the opposition add insult to injury and Paul Volley's post-match volley of abuse at O'Gara was always going to be grist to the mill. Munster team and supporters alike feed off that kind of stuff, voraciously.
Alan Gaffney may have maintained that such considerations were an irrelevant sideshow - and it may be true that Volley's threats at O'Gara weren't even mentioned in team meetings - but come 5.15 p.m. last Saturday the crowd wanted blood and the team scented it.
You'd wonder why opposing teams - all the more so if they know they face a return match in Thomond Park - don't go out of their way to kill Munster with kindness, to lovebomb them with compliments, and above all strive not to provoke them.
Admittedly, that would have been difficult with Castres. To add to the baggage of their own tempestuous run-ins with Munster, Volley, Justin Fitzpatrick and Mauricio Reggiardo all had history in other clothing from previous meetings with Munster or Ireland. In short, deep down Munster probably dislike Castres more than anyone else in Europe.
The irony is that Castres initially went about their task impressively, scoring an early try and threatening to score another one while Donncha O'Callaghan - too fired up for his own good - was cooling off in the bin. Nearing the end of the first quarter, Munster still hadn't caught fire. Cue the fuse.
It started with David Bory manhandling O'Gara after the whistle. In came Richard Dourthe and Alan Quinlan, sparking the game's first all-in spat.
The simmering feud had inevitably come to the surface. It was a penalty to Munster anyway, and O'Gara torpedoed a 50-metre touch find. O'Callaghan returned.
A stupendous 25-metre lineout drive took Munster over the line and, although the badly-positioned Ray Maybank hadn't seen Frankie Sheahan ground the ball - as four Munster subs had done - Munster and Thomond Park were in unstoppable mode again.
The ground, a sea of Santa Claus hats and red flags, issued by their sponsors Toyata, reverberated to the first strains of The Fields of Athenry.
It's funny how a scrap is so often the catalyst hereabouts. Gaffney may demand his players don't become sidetracked from playing their rugby, Anthony Foley may extol the virtues of discipline, but it's as if the red-shirted ones and the red army need a bit of the red rage. It's called controlled fury.
Munster weren't leaving until they scored and the immense Foley tapped and barged over himself, rolling cleverly off a tackle.
They'd also discovered Castres' vulnerable point. Munster had gone wide more in the first five minutes than they had over 80 minutes in France, but the lineout maul had Castres back-pedalling in a tizzy and thereafter Munster remorselessly went for the jugular.
Reggiardo's yellow card for a relatively innocuous flick of the boot at a prone Foley was unlucky, and later, so too was Alessio Galasso's red card.
But Alexander Albouy and Jaques Deen should have walked for their assaults on Peter Stringer as, ultimately, Castres lost their heads.
Another maul held up, and another was again unsubstantiated by the video (If Munster want to reap a fuller dividend from this weapon, they might help RTÉ out with another camera angle or two).
But although Foley was held up off a popped pass, the equally immense Denis Leamy - all youthful muscle and carved out of Munster granite - picked up and dived over.
A third would follow after the interval, most deservedly of all for Paul O'Connell - who had been first to look for Volley in the post-match aftermath in defending his outhalf - when he peeled off another maul before Sheahan had his just deserts and Munster's bonus point after Fitzpatrick and O'Gara had been binned for what was a relatively minor scuffle by this game's malevolent standards.
Although the Munster back play will warrant more critical selfanalysis than anything else, the sight of Christian Cullen skipping through - man, he knows where the tryline is - would have gladdened his team-mates' hearts.
Ultimately, though, this was a victory for the Munster pack. The awesome O'Connell, whose ballcarrying, tackling and general workrate had been staggering to behold, said he felt embarrassed to accept the man-of-the-match award "on behalf of the pack". Assuredly, this was their triumph.
By the end, they had obliterated Castres.
The previous week, one abortive lineout drive around the hour had seemingly drained the legs from under them. Here, they never stopped pumping them, and it looked as if they could maul well into the night.
"It wasn't pretty at times, but it was a real Munster performance," said O'Connell. "Axel (Foley) had asked for honesty before the game, and that's what he got in abundance, and that's what Munster is about on days like this."
You provoke them at your peril. Another great Thomond day.
You could never tire of them.
SCORING SEQUENCE: 5 mins - Lhande try 0-5; 25 mins - Foley try, O'Gara con 7-5; 30 mins - Marticorena pen 7-8; 40 (+4) mins - Leamy try, O'Gara con 14-8; 40 (+11) mins - O'Gara pen 17-8; (half-time 17-8); 49 mins - O'Connell try, O'Gara con 24-8; 68 mins - Sheahan try 29-8; 80 mins - Cullen try, Burke con 36-8.
MUNSTER: C Cullen; S Payne, M Mullins, R Henderson, A Horgan; R O'Gara, P Stringer; M Horan, F Sheahan, J Hayes, D O'Callaghan, P O'Connell, A Quinlan, D Leamy, A Foley (capt). Replacements: P Burke for Quinlan (69 mins); J Williams for O'Gara (75); G McIlwham for Horan, T Hogan for O'Callaghan, M Prendergast for Stringer (all 81); J Blaney for Sheahan, M Lawlor for Horgan (both 86). Sinbinned: O'Callaghan (7-17); O'Gara (65-75).
CASTRES OLYMPIQUE: U Mola; B Lhande, R Dourthe, L Marticorena, D Bory; X Sadourny, A Albouy; M Reggiardo, R Vigneaux (capt), A Galasso, L Nallet, R Capo Ortega, R Froment, A Bias, P Volley. Replacements: J deen for Bias (10 mins); J Fitzpatrick for Deen (40-40+9) and for Reggiardo (half-time); N Raffault for Marticorena (55-58 and 64); D Barrier for Capo Ortega, N Morales for Albouy (both 60); G Argenese for Vigneaux (62); G Metcalfe for Mola (70); Reggiardo for Froment (71-75) and for Froment (81). Sinbinned: Reggiardo (35-40+9); Fitzpatrick (65-75). Sent-off: Galasso (78).
Referee: R Maybank (England).
