Munster find 'x factor' as Gloucester lose it

Saturday, January 18th, 2003. Eclipsing even October 31st, 1978 and all that, they can dine out this one 20 years on. Much like that day and the GPO in 1916, there'll have been 135,000 who claimed there were there but two that were will definitely have a yarn to tell their grandchildren .

An eye witness to the episode was with three twentysomethings who were on their way to the garda station adjacent to Thomond Park when a tout sold them three tickets for €100. Two of them were due in court that day, but they bought the tickets and sent the third guy in to the station, informing them that his mates wouldn't be going to court and to simply tell the judge that they had got tickets for the match.

It's all part of the folklore. After this remarkable day, Alan Gaffney repeated his oft-quoted remark that until arriving in Munster as an 'outsider', he scarcely appreciated what that special 'x' factor is. "Today was another example of it but Gailimh assures me he still doesn't know what it is."

Ronan O'Gara gave it a good few seconds' thought and then sought to shed some light. "The key thing today was that we wanted to put last week's performance right. You want to give the supporters back and you perform best when you've been criticised and your backs are against the wall." Don't write them off or pen them in then.

If they can ever package it, Munster would make a packet. It can enliven the spirit and the mind. It can cure hangovers, it can make strangers embrace, it can bring tears to the eye, it could probably avert war in the Gulf.

Gaffney, though, deserves credit, too. Last Monday he had called each of the players in for a 15-minute systematic video analysis of their performance, and they emerged in turn with a cold-eyed clarity as to what was required.

Gaffney could sense a big performance. "They were much quieter than normal. I could tell they were really focussed on what they were going to do. Although we had a tough time in the scrums in the second-half against Perpignan, our scrum has been strong this season. Paul McCarthy has done a great job and we felt we could really target the Gloucester scrum."

Nigel Melville ruefully shook his head when reminded of the crucial moment when Ludovic Mercier tapped a penalty that, had it been kicked, would have ultimately put them through. "People were losing it out there," he conceded. But in the fury of battle players don't have calculators in their pockets and did he or his fellow coaches send out any messages? A victim of a Munster mugging when coaching Wasps here five years ago, he had warned his players that it would be like nothing they had ever experienced before. "The worst thing is they let themselves down and they let so many other people down. When that happens you feel sick inside. It's a very humbling experience."

When the consequences of that incident were put to an unknowing O'Gara, he smiled his broad smile and merely said: "Brilliant." In truth, Gloucester were "losing it" from far earlier than that. Defensively all over the place when the Munster pack mauled them, blatantly bringing it down or flailing in from all sides, the more obvious examples were the sinbinnings of Peter Buxton and Olivier Azam.

Furthermore, for a team that had never failed to score less than two tries in one game this season, Gloucester scarcely created one half-chance, resorting to panicky damage limitation from a long way out, and not very convincingly at that. A fine front foot team they may be, but in their treks to Perpignan and Limerick they haven't reacted too well to being on the back foot.

O'Gara gave another revealing insight. "We weren't going to be greedy and go for tries early on, but you could sense after 15 minutes that we weren't going to be beaten. You could hear them fighting amongst themselves, and you know you're in business when that starts happening."