European Cup Leicester's qualification route for next season: Leicester look certain to qualify for next season's Heineken European Cup - despite losing their coveted European title and facing a first season without silverware since 1998.
The Tigers' bid to land an unprecedented hat-trick of European Cup crowns collapsed with the 20-7 quarter-final home defeat against Munster.
But if Zurich Premiership leaders Gloucester secure just one point from their Good Friday clash at Sale Sharks, Leicester will be left occupying an automatic European Cup qualifying slot.
It would mean Gloucester filling two seeded places - as Premiership play-off qualifiers and Powergen Cup winners - so the Powergen Cup place then goes to the fourth-placed Premiership finishers, a position currently filled by Leicester.
Tigers could conceivably still make the Premiership play-offs as a top-three finisher, but they are seven points behind Wasps, although with a game in hand.
There is also another possible route into the 2003/04 competition for Leicester, courtesy of the inaugural Premiership wild card play-offs. The four highest-placed Premiership clubs who have not already qualified for the European Cup - England has six places next season - will play off in home and away semi-finals, followed by a final on May 31st, with the winners securing top-flight European status.
Such realistic qualification hopes will be of scant consolation to the Tigers, though, whose 23-month reign as European champions was abruptly halted by a magnificent Munster side.
It was Leicester's first European home defeat since 1999/2000 and first home loss in the European Cup knockout stages. As a result, England has no semi-final representative for the first time in six seasons of European Cup participation.
Leicester lost more than their pride and their European title on Sunday, number eight Will Johnson, a brother of England captain Martin, sustained knee ligament damage and will be out for the rest of the season.
Coach Dean Richards confirmed yesterday he was not the only casualty. "Austin (Healey) will undergo exploratory surgery on his knee and until we receive those results we will not know the extent of his injury. It will obviously take some time for him to recover from the operation."
Richards also admitted Munster were the superior side at Welford Road. "I just think that, on the day, we did not play the game in the right areas and we made too many unforced errors," he said.
"There were a lot of unforced errors from us. Munster put a lot of pressure on us, and we didn't react. If you lose a quarter-final or a semi-final like we did - we were comprehensively beaten - then it is disappointing. We just didn't turn up. It was not the fact that we lost, it was the manner in which we lost."
