Munster head coach Graham Rowntree was admittedly relieved after his side kept up their winning momentum with a tense 27-23 win over Northampton ahead of next week’s trip to Toulouse.
“Relief … that’s the main emotion,” he said after Jack O’Donoghue’s red card left them playing almost three-quarters of the game with 14 men. “That game could have got away from us and I just said that to the lads. It’s hard enough to win against a team of that quality with 15 men but harder again with 14 for nearly 60 minutes.
“We’ve a lot of moving parts there at the end with injuries and substitutions, and we were struggling a bit to relieve pressure from our own half.
“Again, we’ve got to have a look at giving them access through penalties, which eventually they scored two good tries off.
“So, yeah, relief but proud of the lads. Proud of their resolve and that will do us good going forward but, again, there will be heaps to get right for next week.”
Northampton director of rugby Phil Dowson conceded that a “poor” first-half display left them with too much to do at Thomond Park.
“We played some really good rugby in the second half and I was really pleased with the group. First half we were poor, discipline was poor again and we conceded far too many opportunities,” said Dowson.
“When they had those opportunities we conceded far too easily. We conceded two tries from four phases and that’s just not good enough.
“The discipline as well, to give them an opportunity in our 22, and when they were there we conceded so softly – and that’s not a word I would associate with this group very often.”
Asked about the decision to go for the posts rather than kicking a penalty to the corner with 30 seconds left, Dowson said: “The draw doesn’t get us where we want to be in Europe.
“It’s difficult in those situations. If we’d gone to the corner and drawn that would have been something, but I wanted to give us a chance to go and win it.”
