For a team that has given so much to so many, cruelly, they are going to be left with more than their fair share of ghosts. Certainly, if losing one final by a point could be considered harsh, to lose a semi-final as well by the narrowest of margins could almost give you a persecution complex. Once again, Ronan O'Gara will be left to rue three penalty misses, but to saddle him with the blame would be grossly unfair. One was into the wind, one was from almost half-way and the other looked, quite conceivably, to have curled inside the far upright before being hesitantly decreed wide. And ultimately, he once again showed his bottle to then step up and nail the last two.

At least this was only a semi-final, but even so if anything there will be more to gnaw over. For starters there was the outrageous denial of a perfectly legitimate and well-executed try. And, it should be noted, it began with John O'Neill's well-timed run from an on-side position.

Most of all, though, Munster didn't play to anything like their capabilities. Even ignoring last season's memorable semi-final, they've since performed better and duly beaten better sides than this Stade outfit. Another match or two, and this Stade would have been taken.

Reluctant as he was to make excuses, Declan Kidney applied an apt golfing analogy in likening the difficulties Munster had in getting to the pace of a representative game and re-applying their normally innate team-work. "It's like trying to get your swing back and play a championship course at the one time."

As with the one-point defeat to Northampton in last year's final, the minor miracle was that Munster managed to engineer themselves to within a point of their opponents. What got them there was their sheer desire. The second half recovery was made all the more remarkable by the low base which their first half performance provided, primarily in their use of the ball. Certainly, six points were rather needlessly coughed up by uncoordinated attempts to run ball out of defence, leaving Jason Holland and John Hayes isolated and then penalised for not releasing.

Against that, though, the maximum for touch finds into the wind was about 35 metres, and Stade's second-half difficulties hammered home the point.

However Munster's crunch problem, as in mud-bath defeats to Northampton and Bath in the past 12 months, was an inability to adequately control their own set-piece ball. Between the jigs and the reels Munster must have coughed up a dozen of their own line-outs and scrums, and only they could defy that handicap, albeit with the help of a heavy penalty count in their favour.

Munster's line-out has rarely experienced so many difficulties. At their morning work-out, Frankie Sheahan was throwing only bulls-eyes. In the heat of battle Frankie initially missed a few, but Stade also compete better than most (effectively marking John Langford) and also defend better than most, cleverly preventing the catchers from landing and so starting the drive. To utilise their old spring chicken Mick Galwey and actually revive the line-out as a weapon in the second-half was a helluva turnaround.

Donnacha O'Callaghan has come in for a bit of flak, primarily because his handling errors were so exposed - from the kick-off, a couple of line-outs (though one was so off beam that it hit his thigh), and a wayward pass to no-one in particular, suggesting it was more a communication problem elsewhere. In fact he put in some good hits, ran the ball back gamely and worked honestly, a prime example being when he ripped the ball out from a ruck just as Chris White had put his whistle to his mouth to give Stade a turnover scrum in the build-up to O'Gara's third three-pointer.

For sure, David Wallace didn't have his customary dynamic impact as one of Munster's prime strike runners, but given where he'd come from it was a herculean effort. For sure, too, the Munster back-row were beaten continuously to the breakdown, primarily by the excellent Richard Pool-Jones. Witness his continuity play for Cliff Mytton's match-winning try (along with the ubiquitous Morgan Williams) but as that move showed the Stade loosies also had more targets beyond the gain line.

From the base of a retreating or skewing scrum, Anthony Foley's pick-ups were water out of wine vintage. He carried the ball and laid it back every time as usual, and a couple of second half big hits on Christophe Juillet and David Auradou helped keep Stade pinned into their own half.

Munster lacked penetration, save for Foley and O'Neill. Defensively sound, no-one had a better go in running straight at the near impenetrable blue and red line (at one ruck there were 11 of them fanning out across the pitch) than the ever-improving and gamey Shannon wing. In what was largely a war of attrition across the gain line, those attributes mattered more than any other.

To have had his legitimate try disallowed, to have suffered from the disruptions of the past two months, to have been forced to play several key players recently sidelined by injury, all after being drawn away to the competition favourites at the semi-final stage for the second year running, then you have to wonder if the gods were against them.

Then to have played rustily and well below par on the day, to have suffered especially in the set-pieces and then to somehow get within a point of superior opponents on the day, well, you can only wonder at this lot really.

Scoring sequence: 3 mins: Dominguez pen 30; 5 mins: O'Gara pen 3-3; 21 mins: Dominguez pen 6-3; 29 mins: O'Gara pen 6-6; 33 mins: Dominguez pen 9-6; 35 mins: Mytton try, Dominguez con 16-6; (half-time 16-6); 49 mins: O'Gara pen 16-9; 71 mins: O'Gara pen 16-12; 79 mins: O'Gara pen 16-15.

Stade Francais: C Dominici; T Lombard, C Mytton, F Comba, R Poulain; D Dominguez, M Williams; S Marconnet, F Landreau, P de Villiers, D Auradou, M James, C Moni, C Juillet, R Pool-Jones. Replacements - D George for Gomes (81 mins), A Gomes for Juillet (73-81 mins).

Munster: D Crotty; J O'Neill, M Mullins, J Holland, A Horgan; R O'Gara, P Stringer; P Clohessy, F Sheahan, J Hayes, M Galwey (capt), J Langford, D O'Callaghan, A Foley, D Wallace. Replacements - M Horan for Clohessy (81 mins), D O Cuinneagain for O'Callaghan (70 mins).

Referee: C White (Eng)