It's Declan Kidney and Niall O'Donovan's last chance to win silverware with Munster. Gerry Thornley asks them can this be the year Munster finally get what they deserve.
Maybe it's the subconscious pressure being brought to bear by some of the silverware going elsewhere. In any case, they hear the comments themselves, the Munster players and management. "Ah, you're not playing up to scratch" or whatever.
You sense there's a palpable feeling amongst Munster's knowledgeable Red Army that their team haven't scaled the heights of the wins in Saracens, Colomiers and Bordeaux two seasons ago, or even the wins in Newport and Castres last year. So today, something of a pivotal day in their latest Euro odyssey as they seek to secure a quarter-final at home, would be a grand day to assuage some of those doubters.
In terms of personnel, Munster look considerably superior to the quarter-finalists of three seasons ago, and better even than last year with the addition of Jim Williams and Rob Henderson and the maturing of Marcus Horan, Frankie Sheahan, Mick O'Driscoll, Paul O'Connell and Jeremy Staunton.
However, any team in Ireland would miss Peter Stringer right now, team Ireland as much as anyone (witness Murrayfield) for Munster thrive on the sudden gear changes and high tempo recycling which was a trademark especially of their route to the Twickenham final two seasons ago.
Ditto their gamebreakers, and back then many of their scores could be traced to the inroads made by their prime target runners, Keith Wood, David Wallace and Mike Mullins. Sheahan's tight play and close-in work is every bit as good, but no hooker in the world, never mind Ireland, has the same dynamism as Uncle Fester.
As with Ireland too the absence of Wallace has been felt (or even when half-fit, witness the Lille semi-final) while Mullins seems to be more heavily shackled this season.
As someone to punch holes to put the team on the front foot, Henderson would be pretty much up there with anybody in Europe if firing on all cylinders, but thus far he's only played two full games, and only one of those was at inside centre.
Yet, despite all this and the disruptions, Munster's assistant coach Niall O'Donovan maintains, "you go and do the stats on the Munster team at this stage last year, and this team is ahead of it. You go and do the stats on the team two years ago, and this team is ahead of it."
Right enough, they are scoring more points this season than last (31 per game compared to 25 per game) and scoring more tries (3.14 per game as against 2.16 per game), both in Europe and in all competitions, while they are also conceding less tries and less points than they were at this point last season both in Europe and all told.
As Declan Kidney points out tellingly, "when we beat Harlequins four seasons ago the supporters and ourselves were celebrating for a week." Furthermore, that win had little real benefit to Munster, as they had already been eliminated.
Now they run up their biggest ever win in Europe against the same opposition to reach the quarter-finals for the fourth year running and, by comparison, people are nit-picking.
For the last few seasons, Munster have also been, as Leinster are about to discover, seriously prized scalps. "We're now being looked upon in the same way we treated a Toulouse or a Leicester a few years ago. Everybody is trying their best against us." In further mitigation, O'Donovan points out: "We've had a lot disruptions. When can you remember the same Munster team going out two games running? Probably this week is one of the first weeks."
In fact, for the record, it's only the second time this season, Munster previously fielding the same side for successive games away to Bridgend and Harlequins three weeks apart last October. Otherwise, the only constant has been the lack of constancy.
"We've been playing well in patches. Take the Leinster game for example. I would say that for 75 per cent of that game we were alright. For a lot of the games we've been doing everything right for 75 per cent, sometimes 50-or 60 per cent, 80 per cent, and once or twice we've hit 90 to 100. But people look back over the last three years and they can always pick out the good games.
"You'd find it very hard to remember the bad games. I would say we're no different this season from any other season. We've had our ups and downs. But because we've set ourselves - and everybody else has set us - a very high benchmark we're being criticised for not playing too badly.
"Don't get me wrong. We expect more and the players expect more and that creates its own problems as well. Anxieties really."
Suddenly though, they're beginning to take on a healthier glow. It's a helluva bench on duty today. Henderson, Staunton, Wallace and perhaps John Hayes, internationals one and all, not to mention O'Connell, an international in the making. "We'll win the tip rugby at half-time anyway," quipped O'Donovan.
The importance of this game cannot be overstated even if, on the surface, Munster's qualification for the quarter-finals is already assured. There hasn't been an away win at the quarter-finals for four years, since Brive won in Wasps, and no team has ever won the Cup via an away quarter-final. As O'Donovan points out though, Munster's own potted history of the Heineken Cup reinforces all of this.
"This is our fourth year coming out of it now. The first year we didn't get a home quarter-final and we lost. In the last two years we were at home and we won, so we know better than anybody else how important this is and the players know this as well. The idea of getting back to Thomond Park in two weeks' time will be a huge carrot for them, without a shadow of a doubt."
Subconsciously, players in Munster's position could be forgiven for lacking an edge to their performance today, given they are already through, but O'Donovan is quite adamant that there'll be no fear of that.
"No, no, no. Not in the slightest. They're a long time at it now. They're more experienced than most at this, at reaching the quarter-finals and they know how important a home one is."
Their consistency over the last four seasons is enviable. Only Stade Francais have matched Munster's achievement of reaching the last eight for four seasons running though the English clubs might be inclined to point out that they were absent some years (yep, they just might), and likewise Cardiff.
It's also worth recalling that Munster have won 12 of their 14 matches this season. It's just that one of the two defeats was perhaps their biggest game before today, against Leinster, when, almost unthinkably, Munster let opponents off the hook and, just as unusually for them, were opened up as clean as a knife through butter a couple of times through the middle. It made even Munster question themselves.
Yet, as O'Donovan points out, they've been quite consistent in establishing leads this season and pressing home their advantage to close out games.
With Kidney and O'Donovan about to move on to greener pastures at the end of the season, indeed they've long been planning next week's inaugural get-together under the new, expanded Irish management team at Limerick, there will be an undoubted vacuum within the province at the end of the season for which no obvious replacement from within springs to mind.
It's been said that O'Donovan might have helped to smooth over the transition had he stayed on as the number two coach in Munster as well as coaching the Irish forwards, but honourable man that he is, O'Donovan saw too much of a conflict of interest.
Much has been made of Alex Ferguson's departure at the end of the season from an even longer, more successful, tenure as main man at Manchester United, and how a coach's impending departure can diminish his effect in the dressing-room. O'Donovan admits that there's always that fear.
"But there's been no sign of it so far. They're fairly focused on one job. Getting into the next stage of the European Cup." And besides, as Kidney commented: "I think Man United will win the title this year."
Mick Galwey once said that Munster were destined to win the European Cup one day, he just wasn't sure whether he'd still be playing. No one can gauge the mood in the Munster camp better than Kidney and O'Donovan, and the assistant coach has rarely sounded so adamant when asked if the fire still burns. "Better than ever. Just from living with the lads. I'd say better than ever."
