Looking weary, drawn and deflated, and with a sense of déjà vu, Anthony Foley reflected on their latest European setback and how the same old failings were undermining Munster's best laid intentions.
“It was the same problems again, a lack of control, losing the breakdown, inability to score, putting ourselves under a lot of pressure and you end up conceding those sort of scores. It’s very disappointing,” said Foley after the 27-7 defeat in Paris.
His team had seemed to lose their composure when faced by 14 men in the second half, with their season on the line and the pressure of trying to convert their numerical supremacy into points; and playing catch-up from 13-0 down.
“Out there, you know there’s space there and it’s trying to avail of that space and keep pressure on them. We never managed to get that squeeze on them in the second half and that’s good defence out of them, good control out of them and maybe at times it’s poor discipline out of us.
There might have been a way back into the game but for Rory Scannell’s try being chalked of just past the hour but Foley played that down.
“Look, some days you get them and some days you don’t. Seven minutes later, they’re going down for one that wasn’t looked at. I’ve said it before, it’s something that sometimes you can control and other times there’s things out there you can’t control. Ultimately, that’s one of them.”
As to whether he thought the red card could have been a turning, he said: “It happened right on the stroke of half-time and it came from a TMO. Hands to the face, everyone knows you can’t do that. I thought if we got in at 10-3 and got some momentum at the start of the second half, tried to force some pressure on them, but we never got the chance to force pressure on them.”
Asked whether his current squad is good enough to run Munster’s fortunes around after a second successive exit at the pool stages, and a fairly ignominious one at that, Foley said: “You’d like to think so. Before Treviso, we were scoring at a good volume and since Treviso, we’ve struggled to get the scoreboard ticking over. It’s something we’ve worked hard on and something we’ve tried to fix, and we haven’t seen it out on the pitch.”
