Another year, another sobering weekend in April for Munster.
Once again the two-time Heineken Cup winners advanced to the last four in Europe only to be dominated at the penultimate stage.
Munster were missing two Ireland internationals in the form of Joey Carbery and Keith Earls but they were roundly beaten by a Saracens side that effectively bullied them out of the game.
There's no shame in losing to a Saracens side where seven players out of the starting XV are British and Irish Lions but you just wonder with Munster if this is the level where they can ultimately go.
Are they the Spurs of European Rugby? A team that can compete but a side that is ultimately just not good enough to win the competition.
The problem for Munster is that this a team that has had the best defence in the European pool stages for the last three consecutive seasons. It's a team that averaged 26.31 points per game and conceded just 16.04 points per game heading into last weekend. It's a team that brought in Tadhg Beirne and Carbery last summer but still found themselves adrift at the penultimate stage.
The additions of Carbery and Beirne were big coups for the province and largely offset the loss of the club's all-time leading try scorer in Simon Zebo but there's a sense that without Carbery there's only so much this Munster team can do.
That's a lot of pressure to put on a 23-year-old that is still in the first season of playing as a fly-half, after all, there was still doubts up until this season over whether number 10 was actually his best position but realistically how much more can Munster improve?
The nucleus of Peter O'Mahony, CJ Stander, Conor Murray, Keith Earls, Andrew Conway, Rory and Niall Scannell and Jack O'Donoghue have served valiantly alongside each other for years but have never been able to get across that finish line.
Picking up the likes of Chris Farrell and Jean Kleyn along the way certainly adds to a fine spine but ultimately Munster will either need to produce a raft of excellent young players, which, may not be beyond the realm of belief given that seven of the 23 that lined out for Ireland's U20 Grand Slam win against Wales hails from the province, or Carbery will have to drag them there.
You can look at Carbery as a developing player, you can look at him as an unfinished product, which are both fair, but factually this is a guy that was the top points scorer of the Pool stages and was unfortunately missing through injury at the most important juncture of Munster's season.
Given the strength of Munster's defence over the last three years you figure that side of the ball is relatively safe moving forward but their attack still needs work at European level with their 14 tries in the Pool stages ranking 13th out of 20 teams.
It's fine to rack up a rake of tries against the Cheetahs and the Dragons of this world, but against the better teams, Munster have largely relied on their defence to see them through games, with their 41-15 thrashing of Gloucester a notable exception.
Carbery scored two tries and piled on a personal haul of 26 points to essentially oust Gloucester single handedly that day and we saw in the Six Nations when Ireland played Scotland that he has this ability to create something from nothing and it's a spark Munster desperately need.
Ian Keatley and Tyler Bleyendaal have had some great days in the Munster shirt but they don't have the same ability to open things up in attack quite like Carbery who should only continue to improve as a fly-half as the years roll on.
The good thing for Munster is that this is the age profile of their most important players:
- Conor Murray (30)
- Andrew Conway (27)
- Joey Carbery (23)
- Tadhg Beirne (27)
- CJ Stander (29)
- Peter O'Mahony (29)
- Rory Scannell (25)
- Niall Scannell (27)
- Keith Earls (31)
- Chris Farrell (26)
You figure that with the majority of that group on the right side of 30, that Munster should have at least another three year window to compete for a European title with that nucleus and it underlines the importance of Carbery even further as every other player listed there pretty much are what they are at this stage of their career.
Peter O'Mahony is a world class jackler and line-out operator but at 29 he's just not going to be a destructive ball carrier and that's fine. There's seven other forwards that can fulfill that role.
Niall Scannell is a good player but at 27 he probably won't turn into the next Bismarck du Plessis or Dane Coles. Maybe there's still some wiggle room for Beirne and Conway but largely this is Johann van Graan's squad and this is what Munster have gone to bat with over the last few years.
They have brought in the likes of Francis Saili, Jaco Taute, Jean de Villiers, Doug Howlett and other foreign internationals over the years, to varying degrees of success, and unless they can hit on a home run with a foreign import, it's going to be this group again with the addition of Carbery and Earls, injury permitting.
Maybe the consistent strength of Leinster, and the relative age profile of Saracens Lions cohort, as well as other seasonal bolters like Toulon, Racing and Scarlets, may make Munster's journey to the final no less easier, but against Saracens they simply could not break them down outside of Darren Sweetnam's try from a turnover.
It's hard to expect Carbery to be the difference in a side that still lost by 16 at the weekend but he undoubtedly makes them a better side and he could very well be the sword that they live and die by over the next few years.
He just makes the blade that bit sharper.
