European Cup quarter-finals/ Munster 37; Stade Francais 32: So much for the Thomond Park bearpit being an antidote to Super 12 candyfloss rugby. A curiously loose and wild, breakneck Heineken Cup quarter-final was garnished with eight tries and fittingly ended up with a Super 12-type scoreline.
Coincidentally, Munster also conceded four tries in the quarter-finals to Biarritz three years ago but were indebted to a hat-trick from Anthony Foley and seven penalties out of seven from Ronan O'Gara in an equally scary, hairy 38-28 win.
This, though, was even wilder, and owed its origins almost entirely to the boldness of Munster's approach from the off. Indeed, it's doubtful whether Munster have ever set about a rugby match, certainly not a knockout game in this competition, so daringly.
In truth, the set-pieces and the forward exchanges were far too full on for comparisons with Super 12 to be valid. Furthermore, as Christian Cullen noted, defences in the Northern Hemisphere tend to push up more quickly. "In the Super 12 you get more time and space, here you tend to get man and ball more," he noted with a dry smile.
Alan Gaffney and the Munster brains trust detected a softness to the "four-up" Stade defence out wide if they could get around them by the simple expedient of double-miss passes, and his players went for the jugular straight away. Twice they tried it, twice it worked, and Munster were 17 points to the good inside 10 minutes.
Game over? You couldn't honestly say this game was won in the first 10 minutes, for even without such a buffer who would dare say that Munster wouldn't have stubbornly eked out an 18th Euro win in a row at their Limerick fortress - which has never generated such a wall of sound or such a sea of red.
But that opening salvo went a long way towards it. A minute in, with their opening gambit, Munster hoisted Paul O'Connell into the air to occupy Stade's third defensive lineout pod, and Frankie Sheahan deliberately threw long to an unmarked David Wallace.
The ploy had the additional bonus of sucking in Brian Liebenberg from midfield and, from the recycle, skip passes by Ronan O'Gara and Mikey Mullins outflanked Stade's defence, which had pushed up straight, thereby leaving Christian Cullen and Shaun Payne in a two-on-one with Ignacio Corleto. Corleto is good, but he's not that good, and Cullen sent Payne (whose selection was utterly vindicated) haring away from 45 metres to touch down after 85 seconds.
For their next trick, after an O'Gara penalty, the outhalf and Mullins showed off some more with cut-out passes from left to right, the latter's a beauty to release John Kelly outside Thomas Lombard as Stade again pushed up straight.
Kelly had more to do, but veered outside Corleto and deftly kicked ahead for Rob Henderson to beat Cullen to the touchdown.
It's funny how the opening exchanges to almost any sporting contest can so often dictate the remainder of the encounter. Munster, palpably excited, got a little carried away. Stade took up the baton, and meantime pushed up harder and shadowed Munster's attacks to force turnovers when Munster twice more went wide from deep.
Unusually, Munster had Stade by the collar but kept letting them go. Ignacio Corleto kick-started the comeback after an ill-advised pick-and-go, and fumble, by Marcus Horan off the restart, and then by David Wallace and Mullins in turn being sucked in to leave a channel for the classy Puma to glide through. If he were with one of the game's superpowers he'd probably be universally acclaimed as the game's best full back.
That's the downside to Wally's and Mikey's games. The upside was their strong running off a Foley tap - ironically, the Munster scrum was in trouble but twice scored off indirect penalties and their one shunt was in defending an ominous five-metre scrum, so the damage was minimal - and this culminated in a Mullins try.
Typical of their performance, Horan sprinted in for a vital, stunning fourth try against the breeze to keep Stade at bay, but Stade wouldn't let go either.
Liebenberg punished a spate of errors by Munster after the restart, Corleto and Christophe Dominici also put Christophe Moni over and then, at the death, Lombard finished off neat approach work by Dominici and Liebenberg.
Crucially, although he could have played more territory and looked to be nursing that ankle injury, O'Gara augmented his classy distribution with four touchline conversions and a haul of seven from eight.
Diego Dominguez kept pace until hitting the post with an angled conversion and missing a straightish penalty at 34-25. Such are the margins when these two master marksmen duel in the sun.
The lineouts were a great, evenly split battle, Donncha O'Callaghan and Paul O'Connell had big games, Anthony Foley was awesome in defence, and Rob Henderson's ball carrying (one ill-advised offload apart) proved a handy get-out-of-jail card.
Doubters will point to Stade outscoring Munster over the last 70 minutes, the untypical lack of ruthlessness, the defensive porousness and the errors. But they'll be sharper for this, and they'll be emboldened by their boldness. This one will stand to them.
SCORING SEQUENCE: 2 mins: Payne try, O'Gara con 7-0; 6: O'Gara pen 10-0; 10: Henderson try, O'Gara con 17-0; 13: Corleto try, Dominguez con 17-7; 26: Mullins try, O'Gara con 24-7; 30: Dominguez drop goal 24-10 (half-time 24-10); 43: Liebenberg try, Dominguez con 24-17; 45: Horan try, O'Gara con 31-17; 59: Dominguez pen 31-20; 72: Moni try 31-25; 76: O'Gara pen 34-25; 84: O'Gara pen 37-25; 84: Lombard try, Dominguez con 37-32.
MUNSTER: C Cullen; J Kelly, M Mullins, R Henderson, S Payne; R O'Gara, P Stringer; M Horan, F Sheahan, J Hayes, D O'Callaghan, P O'Connell, J Williams (capt), A Foley, D Wallace. Replacements: A Horgan for Mullins (65 mins), J Flannery for Williams (71-80 mins), J Holland for Kelly (81-84 mins). Sin-binned: Sheahan (71-80 mins).
STADE FRANCAIS: I Corleto; T Lombard, J Hernandez, B Liebenberg, C Dominici; D Dominguez, G Mahe; S Marconnet, B August, P Lemoine, D Auradou, M James, P Tabacco, P Rabadan, R Martin. Replacements: P de Villiers for Lemoine (28 mins), S Glas for Hernandez (40+4 mins), M Blin for August (58 mins), C Moni for Tabacco (60 mins), August for Martin (71-80 mins), A Marchois for James (79 mins). Sin-binned: August (71-80 mins).
Referee: Nigel Williams (Wales).
