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The team that won the Heineken Cup for Northampton back in 2000 were out on the field at half-time of this match, Paul Grayson, Ben Cohen, Ali Hepher and the rest of them, taking an anniversary lap of honour for their 9-8 victory over Munster in the final that year. It’s maybe long odds this current squad will be doing likewise in 25 years’ time given the strength of the competition, but they are at least a little shorter than they were. They beat Munster, again, in a very different sort of game, 34-32 this time, and earned themselves home advantage in the last 16 by doing it.
Saints had to work hellishly hard for it. The Munstermen just absolutely would not quit, even when they were as good as out of it. It was one of those matches that the victors had to win once, twice, three times before they were finally able to kick the ball out and celebrate their victory. They had a nine-point lead going into the last quarter, and Munster clawed their way back to within two when Conor Murray put Diarmuid Kilgallen through with a wizardly flick behind his back. Saints scored again, and had a nine-point lead once more, when Kilgallen scored a second to make it a two-point game match all over.
For their part, Saints owed plenty to their wing Tom Seabrook. He is just about the only man in their backline who doesn’t have an international cap, but they love him around here just the same. “He hasn’t always played the most minutes,” the captain Fraser Dingwall said after, “but he always gives so much for the team.” He scored a hat-trick, the third of them an especially good solo finish which was the last of the team’s five tries. It gave Saints just enough leeway to hold off Munster when they came roaring back into the match.
Seabrook’s first had given Saints a 5-0 lead, but Munster came rumbling back into a ten-point lead in a passage in which they scored 15 points without conceding any.
Their skipper Tadhg Beirne was in the thick of it, rampaging around the field like a grizzly bear searching for his first good meal after a year in hibernation. Beirne’s a one-man army when he’s in this sort of form. In one five-minute stretch he charged down a kick from Alex Mitchell, chased the ricochet back into Northampton’s 22, and arrived in time to smash James Ramm with a tackle that injured his right shoulder.
Beirne dropped to his knees so the medic could treat him, got up in time to spring back and help defend a Saints’ lineout in the Munster 22.
Then he stole the ball, and broke back down field again, scattering tacklers as he went. The steal led directly to Munster’s first try. Murray whistled a kick downfield, and Calvin Nash sprinted off after it down the wing, accelerating through a gap in between Mitchell and the all-action hooker Curtis Langdon, who were tracking back ahead of him. Nash controlled the ball with his knee and gathered it in before scoring in the corner. It was superb work. Nash scored a sharp second soon after, too, with a lovely, looping run to the corner after Diarmuid Barron’s break.
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The game broke back Saints’ way when Gavin Coombes was sent to the sin-bin for a high tackle. Saints scored twice while he was off the pitch, once from a maul, and then again when Seabrook squeezed his way through a skinny little gap to score his second in the corner. Ramm added another when Fin Smith put him through with a brilliant tip pass as Murray came haring in on him. Smith missed a couple of kicks, but made a couple more important ones, trading penalty shots with Crowley in the second half.
Munster, buoyed by an enormous pack of travelling fans, kept at it, and in the end Northampton were desperately relieved when Henry Pollock won the final turnover to stop an attack, and end the match, as the Irish came pouring on to try and win it in the final minute. “That’s as close as you can get to a Test match on the club scene,” said Saints’ Dingwall afterwards. It was no word of a lie, either.
