Saturday’s clash with their arch-rivals is one Munster dare not lose

A long summer awaits Munster if they fail to put brakes on the Blues

ON May 28, 2011, Leinster ran out for the Celtic League final at Thomond Park on a high after their stunning comeback to claim the European Cup against Northampton.

Only Gordon D’Arcy was absent from the match squad that had wowed Cardiff seven days before and Leinster’s marquee names like Brian O’Driscoll, Isa Nacewa, Johnny Sexton and Sean O’Brien were primed for the double. Munster were waiting for them. Those were the days before neutral final venues and Thomond was at its feral best, the prospect of taking down the European champions energising the home support.

They were rewarded by a Munster performance driven by the same incentive and the motivation to honour terminally ill fitness coach Paul Darbyshire (he passed away the following month) while Leinster lacked the incision of the previous weekend, three penalties from the hero of Cardiff, Sexton, all they could muster as the home side secured the title with a relatively comfortable 19-9 win.

Watching the Munster players and backroom team celebrate on sunny afternoon in Limerick, few would have envisaged the seven fallow years that would follow. Seven years and counting. Leinster’s reascension to the summit of European club rugby has not only sparked talk of a Dublin-based dynasty on the back of the age profile and international quality of Leo Cullen’s squad, it has also thrown a spotlight on the state of their biggest provincial rivals — not a particularly forgiving one.

Munster’s semi-final dismantling by Racing 92 was a shock to the system. The pool clashes between the two sides had been evenly matched and Munster went into the Bordeaux showdown bolstered by their pulsating quarter-final win over Toulon in Thomond Park.

However, that victory — achieved by force of will, rabid home support and a piece of brilliance from Andrew Conway — created misleading optimism and Munster were horribly exposed by Racing’s early brio, only able to make inroads when it was too late and their opponents had switched off.

It was a game that highlighted the core issues that challenge the province’s desire to mix it again with the elite of the European game.

Firstly, while Munster have access to top quality players that would add value to any side in Europe — Conor Murray, Peter O’Mahony, Keith Earls and Conway — they do not have enough of them, certainly not compared to teams of yore.

In that 2011 final, they started Paul O’Connell, John Hayes, Donncha O’Callaghan, David Wallace, Ronan O’Gara and Doug Howlett — an iconic hard core of experience and ability that backboned the team.

The current crop cannot compete with such a seam of quality and, unlike Leinster, that deficiency is not offset by an Academy churning out a steady stream of gifted youngsters ready to step up.

Sorting out those self-generating systems is a priority (with growing disquiet that the province is not making the best use of the resources at their disposal, notably in Cork) and it is preventing the growth of the type of depth necessary to compete with the true heavyweights.

Take out-half. While the debate continues to rage in Leinster about the best way to accommodate the abilities of three top 10s in Sexton, Joey Carbery and Ross Byrne — Munster’s options of Ian Keatley and JJ Hanrahan have been unable to match undoubted ability with consistent delivery.

It is still a decent squad, more than capable of getting to the latter stages of the Champions Cup while staying at the business end of the Pro14 slog, but when the bar is raised against the top teams, Munster remain a level off.

And the bar is unquestionably raised in the RDS this weekend.

Leinster, wary of what happened seven years ago, will be determined not to have the gloss taken off their Bilbao glory by losing the weekend after.

That would represent an anti-climatic end to a storied season but the consequences of defeat are far greater for Munster.

If they are dumped out of the Pro14 by their greatest rivals, it will be a long summer for the southern province, depression accentuated by Leinster’s clear supremacy.

And, with a support base requiring the oxygen of success to make their presence felt (the pitiful Thomond Park attendance for the Pro14 play-off against Edinburgh showed how the Bordeaux hangover sapped enthusiasm), the need is all the greater.

Defeat would consign another season to the unfulfillment folder, bulging since 2011, and as captain O’Mahony noted rawly after the Racing loss, Munster are ‘tired of losing semi-finals’ and ‘tired of learning lessons’.

Conversely, victory would be a massive lift for a team who could then approach the Lansdowne Road decider with confidence, more than capable of extracting revenge on Glasgow (for the 2015 final defeat) or Scarlets (for last year’s humiliation in the decider).

It would also solidify the ground under the feet of Munster’s manthat