Munster captain Tadhg Beirne bemoaned the familiar feeling for Munster in their Challenge Cup defeat to Exeter on Saturday, saying it was "the same old story" for the province as another European run ended.
Playing into a strong first-half breeze at Sandy Park, Munster coughed up 31 unanswered points as Exeter put the game to bed before half-time. After the break, Beirne hit back in between a double for Jack Crowley, but it was never going to be enough to overturn such a heavy deficit.
The majority of Exeter’s scores came from capitalising on Munster mistakes, as opposed to building pressure when going through the phases. It was a damaging level of inaccuracy, one that ultimately cost Munster the game and with it a chance at silverware in Europe’s second-tier competition.
"It’s probably the same story we’ve been having throughout the year," said Beirne. "It’s inaccuracy around some of our set-piece, accuracy out the back with dropped balls. In fairness to Exeter they were clinical. Intercept, drop ball, try. Drop ball out wide, try.
"Defensively, we felt reasonably comfortable out there when they were going through the phases but in terms of shooting ourselves in the foot, if you watch that first half you’ll see how to do it."
Head coach Clayton McMillan added that Munster paid the price for an inability to capitalise on their handful of first-half opportunities. Crowley nearly found a team-mate for a scoring pass after a break from Gavin Coombes courtesy of a clever Beirne pass, only for Exeter to scramble and win a turnover on the floor.
The third score for the hosts came off another Munster attack, Ben O’Connor throwing an intercept to Will Rigg.
"Against any team in the world if you’re down 31 points it’s going to be hard to come back," said McMillan.
"First 13 minutes in the first half, defensively we were really robust, held out Exeter for a long period of time. Showed a bit of bottle. Got down their end but didn’t capitalise on the one or two little sniffs we had to create some pressure on them. Then we were back in our defensive territory and that just accumulated pressure. It resulted in points for them.
"We probably had moments where we could have managed the game a little bit better, used short sides, started looking for offloads. We were passing out the back when we didn’t have anything on… contestable kicking game could have been our friend.
"We didn’t manage the game. They were good enough to exploit our weaknesses in the first half."
Beirne agreed with his head coach that Munster were guilty of spending too much time in the wrong areas of the field.
"As Clayton has said, we probably overplayed and we didn't go to some of the things that we could have gone to to tighten it up, in terms of the forwards and stuff like that, just to make it more difficult for them to get the ball back.
"We just coughed up the ball to them and they were clinical in fairness to them.
"And then second half, we talked about the first five minutes. I thought we were very good in the first five minutes, but then it was the same story, wasn't it? We'd ample opportunities inside their 22, but dropped balls, just the same kind of mistakes that we've probably been coughing up throughout the season.
"So that's probably the frustrating part because we still put ourselves in a position to claw back at the score at the scoreboard, but it was a big mountain to climb and had it been a bit less on the scoreboard, it could have been a different conversation today."
