"Munster have 'no choice' but to win in Exeter"- Tadhg Bernie

TADHG BEIRNE SAYS Munster have “no choice” but to win away at Exeter this weekend after kicking-off their Champions Cup campaign with a disappointing 17-17 draw against Bayonne.

Graham Rowntree’s team paid the price for an inaccurate performance as they were shocked by the Top 14 side at Thomond Park on Saturday.

Four teams progress from each pool but Munster have put themselves under some early pressure by dropping points against Bayonne. After the Exeter game Munster will face Toulon (away) and Northampton (home) in January. Exeter got up and running in Pool 3 with a late win away to Toulon.

“Look, we said before the game that we were in an unbelievable position to go after this competition and I think after today we have put pressure on ourselves in the competition,” Beirne said.

“Next week becomes way more important than we probably thought it would have been if we’d come away with five points (against Bayonne), we would have been going away for a win. We have no choice but to get a win next week. That’s where the pressure will come. 

The last time Munster made the trip to Sandy Park they were beaten 13-8 in a Champions Cup round of 16 first leg tie in April 2022, winning the return leg at Thomond Park 26-10 the following week.

“It is an incredibly tough place to go. Their crowd plays a huge part. It is often very windy down there and much like tonight it can become a dog fight if you let it, so we are going to have to really implement our own game if we want to come away with a win.

“Again, we will have to look at today and figure out what went wrong and why it went wrong and make sure it doesn’t happen again next week.”

While Beirne picked up the official player of the match award on Saturday night he acknowledged that was he guilty of some uncharacteristic errors himself. The 31-year-old produced some important turnovers when his team were under pressure but also threw a pass out of touch during the second half as the game became increasingly disjointed.

“I think they stayed in it. They managed to stay in the fight and probably get a little bit of belief towards the ends of the game and they certainly took advantage of that, and as I said we had ample opportunities to kill the game but we just couldn’t get over that white line and finish them off.

“You know we had other opportunities five metres out where we were camped on their line, an area that we are usually very good at… We weren’t at our best. That’s the disappointing part. That’s where will probably look back and be annoyed with ourselves that we didn’t get the scores when we should have.

“Mistakes and decision-making. We weren’t winning contacts when we should have been winning contacts. We weren’t playing our game the way we had planned to play it. That is probably the frustrating thing.

“Look it, credit to them, they defended their line incredibly well and they were very physical. They kept knocking us backwards. But it is on us. There was ample opportunities to score, score out wide and we just didn’t really take them.”