Semi-final defeats give Irish rugby a reality check

At the very least, there won't be accusations of complacency against Ireland when they head on their tour of South Africa next month. Silver linings and all that.

If we're reaching for positives after Saturday’s sobering afternoon for Irish rugby, that’s about as enthusiastic as we can get.

Talk of an all-Irish final was greeted like a red rag by the Bulls in Pretoria, before the Glasgow Warriors completed a day of shocks to humble Munster for the second year in a row at Thomond Park.

Both the Bulls and the Warriors were full value for the wins, and that will only sting Leo Cullen, Graham Rowntree, and probably Ireland head coach Andy Farrell even more.

Farrell was watching on at Thomond Park alongside his forwards coach Paul O’Connell, and his eyes may have been drawn to some potential Lions in the Scottish side, rather than the potential Ireland internationals he had planned to watch.

The Ireland head coach is due to name his squad for the tour of South Africa this Wednesday, and it will be interesting to see how the weekend’s results alter his depth chart.

Interestingly, Leinster and Munster seem to have hit a different set of problems late in the season.

For Leinster, their attacking game appears to have been completely stripped down to the basics. Aside from a couple of moments when individuals took the game to the Bulls, they asked few questions of a South African defence which had looked vulnerable over the last two months.

With the Bulls’ injury list seeing them without Kurt-Lee Arendse and Canan Moodie, Leinster continually targeted Sergeal Petersen and Devin Williams on the wings with contestable kicks, from which they got little change.

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that approach, and Leinster senior coach