As was the case when the Vodacom Bulls and Connacht arrived in Cape Town for the two previous Vodacom United Rugby Championship play-off games played at the DHL Stadium, the DHL Stormers enjoyed a considerable advantage over their final opponents in the regular season.
There were 15 points separating Steven Kitshoff’s men from the Bulls and they finished 18 ahead of seventh-placed Connacht. Even though Munster finished fifth to their third, a difference of just two placings, there were 13 points separating the two finalists - the Stormers finished with 68 log points against the 55 that Munster ended with.
But while the Stormers ended up demonstrating their superiority over the Bulls and then Connacht in the quarterfinal and semi-final respectively, there’s something quite different about the challenge they face in the competition decider. They’re up against a team that Jean de Villiers, who played for both finalists in his illustrious career, has described as the form team in the competition, and for good reason.
Not only would Munster have achieved the scarcely believable feat of winning three consecutive away playoff games to lift the trophy, they would also have come back from what was a parlous position in the initial stages of Graham Rowntree’s stint as coach, with the former England prop having taken over from the departed former Springbok assistant Johann van Graan.
Munster started the competition back in September last year by losing to Cardiff away, and they followed up by suffering a similar fate against another Welsh team, the Dragons. As the Dragons had been on the bottom rung of the previous season’s log, just above Zebre, that was a calamitous result that would have introduced question marks over Rowntree’s suitability for the job.
Talking of Zebre, they were the first team that Munster won against, but a 21-5 victory at home against the struggling Italian team was hardly enough to kill off the negativity that was descending. Sure enough, the concerns returned in full force when in the next match Munster lost by nine points to Connacht. Played four, won just one. Hardly championship material.
And while there was something of a turning point when Munster comprehensively outplayed the Bulls 31-17, the start of a sequence of matches against South African teams that ended played four, won three and drawn one, they were quickly back into the trough after that. Indeed, when the team from Limerick and Cork lost by an agonisingly close one point margin at home to mighty Leinster on Boxing Day, just the top eight or top seven position that would have represented qualification for the URC play-offs and next season’s edition of the Heineken Champions Cup looked a forlorn hope.
But there had been unmistakeable signs that the wheel might be turning. Apart from the competitive performance against Leinster, they had thrashed Edinburgh away and also came within one point of beating Ulster, while their two Champions Cup games in December were also encouraging - a narrow loss away to Toulouse and a gutsy win over Northampton Saints in England.
Those who watched that latter game might have spotted what later became the Munster weapon - their unconquerable spirit. Northampton had a lot of ball in that game but Munster dug deep and repelled attack after attack to score an important and morale boosting win.
After the 26 December Leinster defeat Munster started the new year with a win over Ulster in the return derby that was a bizarre reverse of the first round game between them - the final score was 15-14 both times, just it was the away team that won both times.
Munster began to gather momentum as they got into the wintry first month of 2023, taking care of their Champions Cup round of 16 qualification by comfortably beating Northampton in their return game and losing by just four to powerful Toulouse, the eventual semi-finalists.
On the URC front they started their climb up the table by thrashing the Emirates Lions by 30 points, they comfortably beat Benetton in Treviso before humiliating the Ospreys. They were on the way to doing the same to another Welsh team, the Scarlets, before a fightback saw them eventually get home by just seven.
That second half at home to the Scarlets was to prove the start of a mini-blip, with Rowntree being asked piercing questions about his team’s defence following a 38-26 defeat at home at Thomond Park in a game where Glasgow Warriors just ran through them in the first half.
Those defensive frailties were further exposed when the Cell C Sharks knocked them out of the Champions Cup in a Durban game that was far more one sided than the end margin of 15 points might suggest.
As was the case at a later stage of the competition with their opponents in Saturday’s Cape Town final, however, being knocked out of the Champions Cup might have proven a godsend for Munster. It meant they could regroup and absorb the lessons from their trip to South Africa in preparation for their return here for the final two games in the URC league season.
A good start and then brave hanging in later in the piece saw them become the first team to down the Stormers on their home ground since December 2021, and Rowntree made no bones of the fact afterwards that a lot had been learned from their previous trip to Durban about how to beat South African teams in South Africa.
They didn’t beat the Sharks in the league finale, but in coming back from 22-3 down to draw 22-all at Hollywoodbets Kings Park they certainly ended with a moral victory as they cemented their fifth position that set them on a collision path with Glasgow in the quarterfinal. They were helped by a first half red card but when people talk about stars aligning there is an assumption that you are to some extent making your own luck.
Which is what they did the following week in beating Leinster with a late drop-goal, a rare achievement against their arch-rivals, and thus turning a season that was for a long time just a battle for survival into a tilt at their first serious silverware since they won the Magners League in 2010/2011.
That last trophy was 12 long years ago and as their former South African born stalwart and British and Irish Lions and Ireland representative CJ Stander put it this week, that will make them desperate. They’ve travelled a bumpy road that they made look considerably easier through their steady acceleration the nearer they got to the summit of the mountain they’ve been climbing so only a fool will write off their chances of completing a fairytale comeback from the depths they found themselves wallowing in last November into December.
And if they can do it in Cape Town, which has been such a fortress for the top South African team, it will be well deserved.
Road to the URC final for Munster 2022/2023 season
Cardiff Rugby 20 Munster 13
Dragons 23 Munster 17
Munster 21 Zebre 5
Connacht 20 Munster 11
Munster 31 Vodacom Bulls 17
Leinster 27 Munster 13
Munster 14 Ulster 15
Munster 24 Connacht 17
Edinburgh 17 Munster 38
Munster 19 Leinster 20
Ulster 14 Munster 15
Munster 33 Emirates Lions 3
Benetton 30 Munster 40
Munster 58 Ospreys 3
Munster 49 Scarlets 42
Munster 26 Glasgow Warriors 38
DHL Stormers 24 Munster 26
Cell C Sharks 22 Munster 22
URC quarterfinal: Glasgow Warriors 5 Munster 14
URC semifinal: Leinster 15 Munster 16
Champions Cup 2022/2023
Pool
Munster 13 Toulouse 18
Northampton 6 Munster 17
Munster 27 Northampton 13
Toulouse 20 Munster 16
Round of 16
Cell C Sharks 50 Munster 35