EUROPEAN CUP FINAL/Match Quotes: They filed out, in dribs and drabs. Down the staircase from the dressing-room area to the car park, their heavy bags bouncing noisily off the steps through a small mixed zone area where media and microphones awaited their thoughts. But most had their heads bowed, some were still in tears and few had any words in them. It seemed impolite to intrude.

There hadn't been a word said in the dressing-room for half-an-hour afterwards. Each was alone with his thoughts and reflections.

Some, such as Peter Clohessy and Mick Galwey, had their whole careers to look back on.

The majority now had two Heineken Cup finals either side of a semi-final to rue. For Jim Williams and the younger ones, Saturday was bad enough.

No doubt Declan Kidney would argue persuasively and intelligently that the epic odyssey was life-enhancing, that it is better to have arrived than not to have travelled at all.

But, on moments and days like this, you can't help wonder. You think back on the claim by Liam Hayes, for one, that it would have been better for Meath to come out the wrong side of their first round, four-game epic with Dublin than to have lost in the final to Down months later.

On Saturday night, at any rate, and perhaps for some time to come, this probably seemed like one life-enhancing moment too many.

"Certainly, for the guys who are here a second time, it doesn't get easier," conceded Dominic Crotty. "Two tries to nil, we can't have any arguments really. I thought in some ways we left the game behind a little bit.

"We certainly had the ammunition to beat them, but we just didn't pull it out on the day."

"I know that in the first-half we were kicking for position, just trying to put them under pressure, and it worked well, but I think in the final five minutes, when we finally started running at them, we found another chink in their armour which we possibly could have used earlier. But ifs, buts, maybes."

Reflecting on two European finals, a semi-final and a Celtic final that all got away, Crotty concluded: "We're like the Buffalo Bills. At some stage, hopefully, it will turn around for us with a new team. The lads won't be there again, things will change hugely, but maybe next year."

It's been a remarkable five years. "He (Declan) has brought us from being what was essentially a team that beat touring sides on once-offs to being, apart from Leicester, the most consistent side in Europe. So, you know, it takes a great man to do that.

"To change what is a Munster philosophy, from an amateur ethos to a professional ethos, and still be able to keep the undercurrent of the passion and the love of the game, it takes a great man to do that. Declan and Niallo have been fantastic. We'll miss them greatly."

At least, the John O'Neill try that wasn't didn't leave a sense of being wronged, even if there was irony in having recourse to a video replay this time and not in Lille.

"I suppose it went through my head, déjà vu all over again. No, to be fair, I think I did hit the flag first," admitted an emotional O'Neillf. "Fair due to Stimpson (it was actually Healey), he came in low and hard."

"We had our opportunities. It's very hard. It was hard last year, but it's very hard this year, especially with Claw finishing, and Declan and Niallo moving upstairs.

"We had three or four years of a good journey. We start all over again with new troops and new management."

The nagging suspicion remained that Leicester were eminently beatable.

"I don't think they deserved it, that's being perfectly honest with you," said O'Neill. "I was expecting a lot, lot more from them. They weren't as physical as I thought they would be.

"They were certainly organised. They've good footballers, but in Europe we've played a lot stronger but just on the day again, things went with them."

Alan Quinlan echoed this feeling. "I felt we didn't get the breaks. Maybe with a bit of luck we might have won the game. You have to give credit to Leicester they're an excellent side.

"They showed the strength and character of the squad by grinding out the result. We felt that we'd learned from past mistakes. Our preparation was good, so it probably is worse than two years ago.

"We lost a lot of ball in the line-out, but I wouldn't blame anyone. Their defence was excellent, the best defensive line-out we've come across, and they seemed to have every defensive angle covered."

Their mood cannot have been helped by the utter chaos which awaited them and everyone else at Cardiff airport.

With scarcely a dozen check-in points and only two x-ray screens, it was hopelessly ill-equipped to cope with the thousands travelling through. This slow retreat was even worse than Lille.

Eventually, almost three hours behind schedule, they were greeted by a few hundred well-wishers at Shannon airport at about 1 a.m., from where they returned to a more intimate if equally raucous reception in their Jury's Hotel base, and then moved on to Clohessy's Sin Bin.

For Clohessy, this game had been a Last Chance Saloon, and in a revealing commentary on his mood, he hadn't bothered to collect a runners-up medal.

He'd been around too long for another one of those. Sometimes, alas, sport mirrors life, and you don't always get what you want, or even what you deserve.