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Johan van Graan expressed his pride in his Munster team and his satisfaction with their performance despite a 40-33 loss in the round of 16 to Toulouse, which ended his interest in this season’s Heineken Champions Cup.
This leaves them a decade without success in either the Pro14 or Europe, and only leaves the Rainbow Cup to play, assuming it goes according to plan.
“I am very happy with the performance. The 23 guys, all on the team, the coaches and the management did their best. We are very disappointed to lose a game like that, but once you get a performance like that, I am proud of the team. “
Repeating this opinion and noting that “we made our best short and literally fell short on one shot,” van Graan identified the moment in the 65th minute when Wayne Barnes questionably awarded a Keith Earls film to forward Andrew Conway. Munster went 26-23 up front instead of 30-23.
“On the forward pass, I think it went from Keith (Earls) to Andrew (Conway) and we got three points, I wish we had seven there.”
“I think it was a great swing because there were a lot of seven points. But give credit where it is due, congratulations to Toulouse, “said van Graan, who was unwilling to disagree with other contentious decisions by Barnes and his TMO Tom Foley.
When asked if he was surprised that the latter did not refer Barnes to Francois Cros directing the upper chest area of Tadhg Beirne with his forearm, which would soon force him to leave the field, van Graan said: “There were some incidents in the game that we will review and then we will follow normal protocols with Joel Jutge on Monday. “
Similarly, when asked if he saw a hit from Dorian Aldegheri in preparation for Antoine Dupont’s second match sealing attempt that neither Barnes and Foley detected, van Graan said: “We will go and review all incidents and we will give all comments on Monday. “
There was no doubt that Toulouse was revitalized with the introduction of six forwards in the third quarter at a time when they seemed to be on the wane.
“I thought your bank did well and I thought our bank did well,” van Graan said. “They have such an amount of power. I think we handled his scrum exceptionally well. That’s where they have a lot of access against teams to go to the corner. I felt we got attached to the task of stopping his maul, his five-yard chances. “
One of the most puzzling aspects of Munster’s performances was how Damien de Allende was a dominant player in the first half and barely touched the ball in the second.
“I thought he had a very good game. We will have to go and take a look at specifics, but I thought he had an excellent game and I thought he really proved his worth today, ”said van Graan.
But on whether he would have liked de Allende to have seen more ball in the second half, van Graan said: “I’ll have to go check the game. He obviously found a bit of space in the first half and the game had so many changes and roundabouts. Obviously we would like to have the ball in their hands as much as we can and we didn’t do it in the second half. “
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