The point of no return. With the best will in the world to the Celtic Cup, Munster's season dies or lives on in San Sebastien tomorrow. They've been written off before, such as when facing into a quarter-final in Paris against Stade Français, or the Leicester Tigers in Welford Road 12 months later. But Biarritz are possibly even more imposing, and Munster have appeared cursed lately.
To lose the competition's all-time leading points scorer, Ronan O'Gara, their leading try scorer this season in all competitions, Christian Cullen, and their leading try scorer in this campaign, Denis Leamy, might seem a tad cruel, but to lose their newly acquired Samoan missile Brian Lima in his second training session suggests Alan Gaffney walked under a ladder, saw one magpie and crossed a black cat simultaneously.
Nevertheless, in European Cup terms this is an experienced line-up, featuring 14 fully fledged Irish internationals and Shaun Payne, recently capped at A level.
Biarritz were able to rest plenty of their frontline players from all or some of last week's routine 41-3 rout of a depleted and uninterested Stade Français and have named a full-strength team, recalling the Romanian bull Petru Balan, Jerome Thion, Martin Gaitan and Jimmy Marlu.
With so much of Munster's prime attacking weaponry sidelined, Biarritz will be monitoring that backrow threat more stringently this time and now, of course, have the athletic brilliance of Imaonol Harinordoquy and the wily Thomas Lievremont alongside the heartbeat of their team, Serge Betsen. Whichever backrow spends more time on the front foot will probably win.
Biarritz have become, as Alan Gaffney admits, "a well-coached team with good patterns" and as they showed when ahead by a bagful of home town penalties to run in three tries in the last 10 minutes against Stade, are confident and ruthless frontrunners.
The maul remains a favoured weapon, from almost anywhere, although their first try underlined the width they keep to their game, going through six phases and punching away in narrow right channel corridors before switching flanks where Betsen, invariably in close contact with Harinordoquy, delivered the scoring pass to his fellow flanker. Stade were able to outflank Biarritz's relatively passive defence and aside from limiting opportunities for their maul and generally being at their disruptive best, making offensive tackles around the fringe, Munster are going to have to launch plenty of hard runners at the French themselves.
"Courage can only get you so far," admits Gaffney. "We've got to play the game right on them. It's a way of playing the game that will require a fair degree of skill. They defend a bit differently, they're not aggressive.
"We've got to be aggressive to them. It's going to be a huge battle up front, they're enormously powerful, their rolling maul can score against the best in Europe and we've got to deal with all of that. There's doom and gloom out there but the players aren't doom and gloom. They've been in tight corners before, and got out of it. We'll give them a good afternoon's work."
If the match lives up the occasion we're in for an epic. Allowing for the unique setting, the combined fervour of the Basque supporters and the Red Army is symptomatic of all that makes the European Cup so wonderfully tribal. In such circumstances, it would be just like Munster to produce a sleeves-rolled-up, odds-defying epic of their own, but so much appears stacked against them.
BIARRITZ OLYMPIQUE: N Brusque; P Bidabe, D Traille, M Gaitan, J Marlu; J Peyrelongue, D Yachvili; D Avril, B August, P Balan; O Olibeau, J Thion; S Betsen, I Harinordoquy, T Lievremont (capt). Replacements: J-M Gonzalez, B Lecouls, D Couzinet, T Dusautoir, J Dupuy, J-B Gobelet.
MUNSTER: S Payne; J Kelly, M Mullins, R Henderson, A Horgan; P Burke, P Stringer; M Horan, F Sheahan, J Hayes; D O'Callaghan, P O'Connell; A Quinlan, D Wallace, A Foley. Replacements: G McIlwham, J Flannery, T Hogan, J Williams, F Murphy, J Holland, P Devlin.
Referee: C White (England).
PREVIOUS MEETINGS: (2000-01) quarter-finals - Munster 38 Biarritz 29.
EUROPEAN CUP FORM GUIDE: Biarritz (Pool One winners, 4th seeds) - 12-25 v Wasps (a), 23-8 v Leicester (h), 41-10 v Calvisano (h), 48-17 v Calvisano (a), 21-17 v Leicester (a), 18-15 v Wasps (h). Munster (Pool Four winners, fifth seeds) - 15-9 v Harlequins (h), 20-18 v The Ospreys (a), 12-19 v Castres (a), 36-8 v Castres (h), 20-10 v The Ospreys (h), 18-10 v Harlequins (a).
LEADING TRY SCORERS: Biarritz - Jimmy Marlu 4, Philippe Bidabe, Christophe Milheres, Jean-Baptiste Gobelet, Jerome Thion 2 each. Munster - Denis Leamy 3, Anthony Horgan, Anthony Foley, Christian Cullen 2 each.
LEADING POINTS SCORERS: Biarritz - Dimitri Yachvili 57. Munster - Ronan O'Gara 47.
ODDS (Paddy Powers): 3/4 Biarritz, 25/1 Draw, 11/4 Munster. Handicap odds (= Munster +9pts) 10/11 Biarritz, 16/1 Draw, 10/11 Munster.
VERDICT: Biarritz to win.
Biarritz Olympique v Munster Sunday, Estadio Anoeta, 3pm
ON TV: RTÉ2, Sky Sports 2
