Illness no excuse for Munster's European exit - Tadhg Beirne

Munster captain Tadhg Beirne refused to blame a bug in the camp after the province exited the Investec Champions Cup at the Round of 16 for the second successive season.

Their clash at Northampton Saints was finely poised at half-time, 14 points apiece, but the hosts bagged two tries through replacement winger George Hendy and kept Munster scoreless in the second period to run out 24-14 winners.

Ireland lock Beirne was among those affected by illness, and was coughing after the game, but he said it was not the reason Munster had been beaten.

"People get sick, that's part of life. You just get on with it," he said.

"That happens in team environments where we’re scrumming down against each other and all that kind of stuff.

"Lads are going to pick up bugs but that’s not the reason we lost. We went out there, went toe to toe with Saints, they just got the upper hand. We’ll have to take that on the chin.

"It was a battle. You saw in the first half how tight it was and even in the second half, the game was on a knife edge for the majority of it.

"We go from having them in their 22 to all of a sudden they’re scoring. It’s moments like that we’ll look back on and be very frustrated with.

"But I can’t fault the lads’ effort. It was certainly a battle but we came out on the wrong side of it."

Munster boss Graham Rowntree said he was "Frustrated. I spoke to the lads afterwards... I keep using this expression, 'giving them presents, giving them freebies.'

"Some big moments there where they were that good on transition when we dropped the ball or made an error and they were gone.

"There were some big swings in the game where we could have scored a try if someone held a pass, we would have scored, but they won the ball back and a few phases