Johan van Graan expressed his pride in his Munster team and contentment with their performance despite the 40-33 last 16 defeat by Toulouse which ended their interest in this season's Heineken Champions Cup.
This leaves them a decade without success in either the Pro14 or Europe, and leaves only the Rainbow Cup to play for, presuming that goes ahead as planned.
“I am really happy about the performance. All 23 guys, everyone in the squad, coaches and management gave it their best shot. We’ve very disappointed to lose a game like that, but once you get a performance like that, I am proud of the team.”
Repeating this view and noting that "we gave it our best short and we literally came up short by one try," van Graan identified the moment in the 65th minute when Wayne Barnes questionably adjudged a flick on by Keith Earls to Andrew Conway forward, ensuing Munster went 26-23 in front rather than 30-23.
“On the forward pass, I think it was from Keith (Earls) to Andrew (Conway) and we got three points, hopefully we would have got seven there.”
"I think that was a big swing there because there were a lot of seven pointers. But give credit where credit is due, well done to Toulouse," said van Graan, who was not of a mind to take issue with other contentious decisions by Barnes and his TMO Tom Foley.
Asked if he was surprised that the latter didn't refer Barnes to Francois Cros leading with his forearm into Tadhg Beirne's upper chest area, which would soon force him to leave the pitch, van Graan said: "There were a few incidents in the game that we will review and then we will follow the normal protocols with Joel Jutge on Monday."
Likewise, when asked if he saw a knock-on by Dorian Aldegheri in the build-up to Antoine Dupont's match-sealing second try which neither Barnes and Foley detected, van Graan said: "We'll go and review all the incidents and we'll give all the feedback on Monday."
There was little doubt that Toulouse were re-energised by the introduction of six forwards in the third quarter at a stage when they seemed to be wilting.
“I thought their bench did well and I thought our bench did well,” said van Graan. “They’ve got such an amount of power. I think we handled their scrum exceptionally well. That’s where they get a lot of access against teams to go to the corner. I felt we stuck to the task of stopping their maul, their five yard opportunities.”
One of the more puzzling aspects of Munster’s performances was how Damien de Allende was a dominant performer in the first half and scarcely touched the ball in the second.
“I thought he had a very good game. We’ll have to go and have a look at specific things but I thought he had an excellent game and I thought he really showed his worth today,” said van Graan.
But as to whether he would have liked de Allende to have seen more ball in the second half, van Graan said: “I’ll have to go and review the game. Obviously he found a bit of space in the first-half and the game had so many swings and roundabouts. Obviously we would like to get the ball in his hands as much as we can and we didn’t in the second-half.”
