The sight and sound of Tadhg Beirne spluttering and coughing through Munster’s post-match press conference was sufficient proof that Graham Rowntree didn’t really need to confirm that the squad had been hit with an ill-timed bug in the lead-up to their Champions Cup Round of 16 tie in Northampton.
RG Snyman had been ruled out of the game due to a particularly acute case of the virus, while Craig Casey could be seen throwing up on the pitch before the second half kicked off as an understrength Munster eventually wilted to lose a cracking tie by 24-14 to the Saints.
“There’s nothing to elaborate on,” said Rowntree, keen not to apportion any of the blame for the defeat to the sickness which compounded their casualty list, particularly in their tight five.
“We had a bit of a bug going around the group. We will regroup this week and have a look at what we’re doing. I was just talking to Tadhg about what we will not do this week, rather than what we will do. We will regroup and then we’re down to South Africa for two weeks. Two huge games again in South Africa and we’ll get on with it. We’ll dust ourselves down, see what we can fix, and drive on.”
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Similarly, Beirne said: “Look, people get sick, that’s part of life. You just get on with it. As Wig [Rowntree] alluded to, there was a bit of sickness going around. That happens in team environments where we’re scrumming down against each other and all that kind of stuff. Lads are going to pick up bugs but that’s not the reason we lost today. We went out there, went toe to toe with Saints, they just got the upper hand. We’ll have to take that on the chin.”
Rowntree admitted to being “frustrated” with the nature of the defeat.
“I spoke to the lads afterwards about – I keep using this expression – ‘giving them presents’, ‘giving them freebies’ Some big moments there where they were that good on transition when we dropped the ball or made an error and they were gone.
“There were some big swings in the game where we could have scored a try if someone held a pass, we would have scored. But they won the ball back and a few phases later, they scored. So those errors, I thought we gifted them.
“I’m proud of our effort. We stuck in there, a proper game of rugby. It’s not been a straightforward week in terms of availability and illness. As you can hear from my man here, it’s not been the most straightforward but we rolled our sleeves up and got on with it for a big game against a great team. I’m proud of our effort but we’ll sit down and look at how we don’t give away those presents.”
Beirne himself battled through his illness with several trademark turnovers in a leading from the front effort, which left him sounding and looking utterly drained,
“It was a battle, wasn’t it? You saw in the first half how tight it was and even in the second half, the game was on a knife-edge for the majority of it. We go from having them in their 22 to all of a sudden they’re scoring. It’s moments like that we’ll look back on and be very frustrated with. But I can’t fault the lads’ effort. It was certainly a battle but we came out on the wrong side of it.”
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