Munster head coach Johann van Graan insisted he was just happy to come away with a win against champions Saracens in their hard-fought Champions Cup Pool 4 fixture at Thomond Park.
Saracens, minus the likes of England stars Owen Farrell and the Vunipola brothers, Billy and Mako, picked up a losing bonus point in the 10-3 defeat in difficult conditions.
The sides play the return fixture at Allianz Park next Saturday.
Second-placed Munster, who scored the only try through captain Peter O’Mahony in the 30th minute, trail Pool 4 pacesetters Racing 92 by a point and enjoy a five-point advantage over third-placed Sarries ahead of that return game.
Scrum-half Ben Spencer landed one of his three penalty attempts for the visitors.
Afterwards Van Graan, asked if he was disappointed that Saracens had managed to take a losing bonus point from the game, said: “We will take a win against Saracens any day of the week. Right from the start we knew this pool was going to be tight.
“From our point of view we are still unbeaten in the group. An away win with a bonus point over the Ospreys, a home win against Saracens and a draw against Racing, so it is going to go right down to the wire.
“The only thing we can control is next week against Saracens again in London. I am very glad about the win, very tough conditions in that last 50 minutes of the game.”
Munster lost replacement back rower Arno Botha to a late red card for leading with a forearm into Saracens’ Nick Tompkins.
Van Graan said of the incident: “I will have to go and have a look at it again. Initial thoughts, the referee didn’t have any choice. Look, it happens so quickly, it was literally instinct.
“It was actually such a great carry and unfortunately if his forearm made contact with the head the referee doesn’t have any decision to award a red card. Obviously he feels bad about it, it happens in a split second and we will just have to look at it.”
Saracens director of rugby Mark McCall said his feelings on the low-scoring encounter were mixed, admitting: “A mix of being very pleased with a lot of things, the effort, the togetherness we showed, the ability to bounce back from a number of things that went wrong in the game, that was really good.
“A bit of frustration because having got ourselves into a situation where we had the elements in the second half and only a seven-point deficit, it is probably something we will look back on and be frustrated that we could not have done better in the second half.”
McCall felt the losing bonus point keeps the title holders in the mix for qualification from the group, despite suffering their second away defeat of the pool stages.
“It is probably out of our hands to a degree. We need to win next week. We do know Munster have a tough game away to Racing in round five. There is definitely hope, but next week is huge for us and we’ve got to win next week.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here