IT IS pretty much the definition of the word bittersweet; a chance to play in front of your foreign relatives in a big crunch match after displacing a member of this season’s Six Nations international squad in a key role. Then it all went wrong. The return to old haunts turned into a triumph for the opposition.

You can imagine how Sean Kennedy, the Edinburgh scrum-half who spent his early years in Munster before returning to Scotland for his secondary school years, was feeling after seeing the Scottish side’s season just about fall apart in 10 calamitous minutes in Cork.

“Gutted, just absolutely gutted,” he said. His Irish relatives? “Gutted for me. Pleased for their team, but I think they are more upset on my behalf. It’s a bad feeling.”

What made it worse is that everything was set up for it to be a landmark day in Kennedy’s life. It was Edinburgh’s biggest game of the season, a must-win match against one of their rivals for that final European Champions Cup spot, and he was starting ahead of Sam Hidalgo-Clyne. It was a torrid experience for Kennedy. Munster flooded the breakdown, especially when Edinburgh were running back kicks and their players were slightly light on support, and time after time Kennedy was confronted with two or three big Irish forwards piling through the ruck as he tried to get the ball away.

“It is what it is,” he added. “Personally it was good to get a run, but I am pretty hard on myself and there are things I could have done better. There is plenty of healthy competition for scrum-half – myself, Sam [Hidalgo-Clyne] and [Nathan] Fowles – but it is all about the result and we did not get that.

“Munster had targeted the breakdown. They did not go at everyone but when they did, they came hard and put me under pressure. We spoke about it during the game, we needed to tighten up and be stronger over the ball. The boys managed to do that, but they still saw opportunities, came through the rucks and put pressure on. We knew it was going to come.” The arithmetic is simple. By going down not just to defeat but also conceding a four-try bonus point to their opponents, the only way Edinburgh can clinch that vital sixth spot in the Guinness PRO12 would be to hammer Cardiff Blues next week, claiming only their third try bonus of the season, and hope that not only do the Scarlets win in Thomond Park, but that Munster come away pointless.

Either might happen, but what are the odds on both? One in a hundred? One in a thousand? Longer still?

“We will give it everything we have,” promised Kennedy, pictured. “We need to get maximum points from that game and hope other things go our way. We have to do our bit and get the points we need. Then it is up to other people; we can’t control that.”

What made the result even worse to cope with was that, though they were second best for most of the game, they did hang in and for 13 minutes after Hidalgo-Clyne landed a long-range penalty there was only one point separating the teams.

Instead of Edinburgh pushing on to complete their comeback – they had been 20-10 down just before half time – they allowed the Munster maul to take over. The Irish got close to scoring twice before another maul set up the position for Francis Saili, the opposition centre, to cement the result and get that vital extra point.

Heartbreak for Kennedy and his team-mates and a mountain for them to climb next week, knowing that it almost certainly won’t be enough.