With their biggest game of the season coming up at the end of this week, Edinburgh could not have picked a worse time to produce one of their weakest performances of the year, allowing themselves to be bullied out of the game by a Munster side gunning for the Guinness PRO12 title.
From the Irish perspective, the result maintained the weekend theme of all the leading teams winning with try bonus points, leaving the top four unchanged, with Glasgow Warriors still two points clear. It does move Munster into second place, overtaking Ulster on points difference, but four points still cover the four play-off places with Leinster chasing hard in fifth.
As far as Edinburgh are concerned, not only did the match expose frailties, particularly in defending the rolling maul, that the Newport Gwent Dragons will be looking to exploit in the European Challenge Cup semi-final at BT Murrayfield on Friday, but it uses up the breathing space that their win at the Scarlets a couple of weeks ago had given them in the hunt for an automatic European Champions Cup place next season.
They drop to eighth, a point behind both the Scarlets and Connacht with the Irish ahead by virtue of having won a game more, but still face a tougher run-in than their Welsh rivals whose remaining opponents are all in the bottom third of the league table.
First, Edinburgh need to dust themselves off, put this performance out of their minds and get on with the business of trying to reach their first major cross-border final. To do that, they are going to have to defend the rolling maul much, much better, take a close look at their defence if they do lose a man to the sin bin and work out how to get tries in periods when they are on top.
One hope is that they will be closer to full strength. Mike Coman, the captain, was never available for this game; Sam Hidalgo-Clyne, the scrum half who won man of the match awards in each of Edinburgh's last three games, dropped out the day before after failing to recover from a shoulder problem and David Denton, their Scotland No.8, lasted only 12 minutes before getting a bang on the head and being taken off as a precaution. All three are expected to be available on Friday.
They are still carrying long-term injuries, but Alan Solomons, the head coach, is convinced that those three will make a huge difference to the side when they slot back in. The two back row men will be particularly important in bringing the physical power and line out expertise that was missing against Munster.
The strange this was that for large parts of the game, Edinburgh coped relatively easily with most of what Munster could throw at them. The exception was the maul, which had already produced scores for Duncan Casey, the hooker, and CJ Stander the No8, to give them a lead before the moment that ended the game as a contest when Ian Davies the referee got fed up with Edinburgh's ruck defence and sin binned Tim Visser.
A third try from a maul, Conor Murray, the scrum half getting his hands on the ball this time, was followed by two quick-fire scores by the wings, Simon Zebo and Keith Earls, as Munster exploited the space in the backfield from Visser's absence and, with 19 points while he was off, ended the contest.
"Physically we just did not step up at some points," admitted Hamish Watson, the flanker. "At half time we were only seven points behind and felt we could still win but then a few decisions did not go our way, we can't afford to give away stupid penalties or mess up line outs in attack, those are momentum swings."
Edinburgh: G Tonks (T Brown, 68); D Fife, P Burleigh (S Beard, 55), A Strauss, T Visser (sin bin: 55-65); T Heathcote, N Fowles (G Hart, 55); A Dickinson (G Shiells, 72), R Ford (C) (S McInally, 62), W Nel (J Andress, 72), A Bresler (F Mckenzie, 51), B Toolis, R Grant, H Watson, D Denton (T Leonardi, 12).
Scorer: Pen: Heathcote
Munster: F Jones; K Earls (R O'Mahony, 66), A Smith, D Hurley, S Zebo (D Williams, 73); I Keatley (JJ Hanrahan, 74), C Murray; D Kilcoyne (J Cronin, 51), D Casey (E Guinazu, 60), BJ Botha (S Archer, 60), B Holland, P O'Connell, P O'Mahony (C) (D Ryan, 52), T O'Donnell, CJ Stander.
Scorers: Tries: Casey, Stander, Murray, Zebo, Earls. Cons: Keatley (3). Pen: Keatley.
Referee: I Davies (Wales).
Attendance: 4,818
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