RUGBY:Munster are Heineken European Cup champions no longer. It would have taken a near vintage Munster effort to subdue a deeply impressive and much more hard-running, aggressive and high tempo Llanelli last night in Stradey Park, where the Scarlets hadn't lost in 14 months, and this was far from Munster at their best.
On the back foot defensively, where there were too many holes in midfield and outside, Munster could on another night have hung onto Llanelli's shirt-tails until their time came. But trailing 17-0 at the break, they were forced into playing catch-up. They showed their pride, but it always looked beyond even these Houdinesque champions, and they went down 24-15.
They sorely missed the combined leadership of Paul O'Connell and Anthony Foley, as well as the former's sheer presence.
Stuck on zero points for over an hour after Ronan O'Gara missed a couple of kicks at goal, they backed themselves into a corner by three times turning down possible three-pointers in the first half, and again after the break. In hindsight, it probably was asking too much of O'Gara to also captain the side.
Repeatedly they moved the ball with skip passes by O'Gara into the wider midfield channels, where they were regularly cut down by the fast-advancing Gavin Evans and Regan King. Alix Popham appeared to be everywhere and Simon Easterby spoiled as only he can. Llanelli were by far the better side, as both O'Gara and Declan Kidney readily acknowledged.
"Fair play to them," said O'Gara, clearly hurting, in acknowledging Llanelli's greater intensity. "They had a hunger which we couldn't match, which was the disappointing thing. The international boys took a break last week and we weren't as sharp as we should have been tonight. It's going to be a long few days now."
While maintaining that the performance if anything proved that resting their Irish frontliners was the right decision, in citing the importance of a breakthrough fifth-minute try by Dafydd James Kidney commented: "We'll take a look at our performance and we'd certainly be disappointed with some aspects of our performance but we won't go into it tonight.
"Llanelli were very sharp. They kept the ball alive very well once they made line breaks which kept us under pressure. In the third quarter we didn't have the ball for long stretches. We got eight points, but I wouldn't say we got ourselves back into it. They were generally just on top for the whole evening."
His counterpart, Phil Davies, spoke of his pleasure bearing in mind Llanelli's massive respect for Munster and pinpointed their ability to "keep the ball in the contact area" as key. "They never give in. We said at half-time we were in an arm wrestle and we had to stay there."
Easterby glowed with pride.
"We've beaten the champions of Europe and it doesn't get much bigger than that."
Expressing the hope that the similarities between the teams will see Llanelli take the same fervour all the way to the final, he added: "They give everything up front and it was probably even-Steven there, but probably our backline was the difference between the two sides."
Munster had been officially allocated some 2,500 tickets but allowing for the seamless sea of red outside and the traffic congestion, it appeared that there were a good deal more than that, perhaps 3,500 to 4,000, among the 10,800 capacity at his fervent hotbed of west Welsh rugby.
Pockets of the Red Army could thus be heard and seen in all four corners of the ground, including the covered Pwll End behind the posts which Munster defended in the first half where the Llanelli supporters brass band were also congregated.
The ground fairly crackled from a good half hour before the kick-off, with choral Welsh classics reverberating from the PA system. Though Munster wore an unfamiliar grey and black "away" strip, everyone else wore red. Each sought to outsing the others with renditions of The Fields intermingling with Sospan Fach.
Munster have been the arch escapologists, but they had never dug a hole this big for themselves. Try though they might, and inching back to 15-8 with 10 minutes to go, it always looked beyond them. They'll always have Cardiff, circa May 20th, but now they have Llanelli as well.
That's sport. That's life.
