Asked to take on additional responsibility with a switch of position Darcy Graham, the youngest member of Edinburgh’s beaten side in Saturday’s Champions Cup quarter-final, reckoned he and his team-mates had matched up well to Munster’s might.

“We’re very frustrated. We were in it for the whole game and it just got away from us,” said the 21-year-old, who was asked to switch from his customary role on the wing, where he scored two tries for Scotland at Twickenham a fortnight earlier, to full-back.

“These big games down to the fine margins, little details. We were fairly clinical for the whole game but fair play to Munster, you can’t take it away from them.

“They play a similar game style and I wouldn’t say either team was really better than the other. I’m just gutted.

“They’re a very experienced team and they’ve been here 13 times or something, so credit to them. I don’t think they were better in any area, really, not even discipline, because we only really gave away one penalty. They put it in the corner and scored off it.”

He was, however, immediately ready to set Saturday’s disappointment aside and focus on the right response, by getting into the Pro14 play-offs and earning a place in next season’s Champions Cup.

“We need to take the pain from this, get back in on Monday and focus on the Pro 14,” he said.

“We’re not out of that yet, so we’re aiming to finish in the top three, finish the season on a high. That is huge for us because this season has been great for us, playing in these big games. They’re massive for us and that’s where we want to be as a team, playing in these games week in, week out. That’s what we’re striving for, to finish top three in our conference and get back into Europe.”

They can do so in the knowledge that they have earned the respect of the team that knows more than any other what is required in this competition, Saturday having seen them register two records with an 18th quarter-final appearance, in turn earning them a 13th in the semis.

“We knew that we had to dig in deep and it wasn’t going to be pretty,” Munster’s South African coach Johan van Graan said afterwards.

“Playing against Cockers, he’s a fantastic coach he’s really gritty and gets stuck in, you can see it is his players, they got stuck in for the 82/83 minutes, whatever it was. From our side, it required a lot of belief and I said to the guys, ‘let’s really enjoy tonight, that’s our third semi-final in a row.’”

Whether Munster have the quality to go any further remains to be seen, given that they must now head to England to meet a Saracens side that demolished Glasgow Warriors in Saturday’s second semi-final, but the resilience they showed in coping with a succession of setbacks bodes well for such adversity to come.

“We’re far from winning a trophy and achieving our goals,” said van Graan.

“We’ve only won a quarter-final. After last year’s two (Champions Cup and Pro14) semi-final performances we had a real good look at our game, at our training and you’ve got to train these things and put players in these positions.

“If you just think about today, losing Mike Haley (to pre-match illness), a yellow card to your lock… then you lose your openside (Jack O’Donoghue) that has just come back and then you lose your starting 10 (Joey Carberry). Mentally that is massive to come through and I’m really happy that our guys did. That points to very good planning, very good research, but it’s up to the players to solve issues on the field.

“I thought we solved a lot of issues and once we got in front we were difficult to beat.”

So, too, were Edinburgh, but there could only be one winner and in the end the men who have been born and bred in a winning environment offered the latest harsh lesson to those who are just beginning to discover at a much more advanced stage of their rugby development.