Fans caught in a traffic jam but English raiders clear a path to the final
THIS was a Dublin we thought had gone and was not returning. Munster fans bent on sharing in a famous day got caught up in traffic delays miles from the city.
The motorway in Kildare was stuffed red.
Enough had got through early or are exiled in the capital to ensure there were shocks of red splashing around Ballsbridge from early on Saturday morning.
And when the rest of them made it in, they found a city with a look of the early 2000s to it: Munster supporters were everywhere, and the price demanded for a two-bed house had quadrupled over the past two years. This was the old days. That feeling of familiarity pervaded the ground, too. Munster’s best day in these parts was in the old stadium 11 years ago, when they minced Leinster. The venue has changed but there was a recognisable power to the volume and the extent of the support.
As expected, Munster fans were everywhere. Saracens are a club with no extensive roots, and they cannot call upon the depth of support that Munster en fete can.
It is one of the reasons they are disliked and scorned, but it is an error to suppose they are only a cold, ruthless franchise. They have no significant support base, but sport at this level is decided by more than rousing verses of The Fields of Athenry.
There is no shortage of money or expensively acquired imports at the club, that is true, but they also produce brilliant young English talents. Two of them, Owen Farrell and Maro Itoje, will lead the club for years to come. And they were there in the first half here when Munster took their inspiration from the tens of thousands of partisans screaming the province on. Their half of the pitch could have been used for pasture as the action was almost entirely concentrated on the Saracens patch.
With all of the pressure, though, Munster could not score a try, and did not look much like producing one, either. Saracens were like a bog, this permanent-seeming mass that could absorb whatever the elements might dump upon it, and be unchanged by it all. And that phenomenon then swallowed Rassie Erasmus’s team down in the third quarter. Unlike their opponents, the English team made sure they left opposition territory with a try to illustrate their power.
Shortly before Mako Vunipola barrelled over the line, Peter O’Mahony had been removed for a head injury assessment from which he would not return. Were Munster to bridge the obvious differences in quality between the teams, they needed all of their best men to lead and inspire. Losing just about the best of them was a ringing blow.
Delivered in combination with the Saracens try, this was a decisive onetwo. The fans continued to make remarkable noise but it was born of desperation rather than ambition.
Many would have feared as much earlier in the day, certainly those who had left early enough to avoid the briary traffic. Three separate traffic accidents hiccupped along the M7 motorway, with speculation that kickoff might be delayed. That was never even considered by the organisers, but this Saracens team look as if they could manage any eventuality.
Munster flared once in the fourth quarter with one angry rumble into the visiting 22, but that passage of play would end with Saracens’ Chris Wyles scoring their second try. Farrell’s conversion was accompanied by the odd angry shout, rugby’s tiresome proprieties breached by some Munster fans reduced to heckling by traffic or beer or disappointment.
Farrell still scored, because Saracens just do not make mistakes.
In their style of play but mostly in their attitude, this team must be the inspiration for the new model Munster. Erasmus has achieved an enormous amount this season, more than he might have believed possible given the players he has. Repeating it next season will be a big job, let alone improving upon it. They will need to sign quality players, starting with two second rows and continuing with cover at scrum half and on the wings.
Their courage and their willingness to have a cut cannot be doubted, but they are not the obdurate force they were when winning European Cups.
That was back in the time when red jerseys ruled a Dublin where the price of a home was one ordinary people could not meet.
There were echoes of the past around the place yesterday, but the closest resemblance to the Munster of those days was found in Saracens’ eyes.