Racing 92 ripped the Munster defence to shreds with three tries in the opening 21 minutes, setting up an eventual 27-22 win at Stade Chaban-Delmas and their second Champions Cup final appearance.
Runners-up in 2016, the French giants will meet unbeaten Leinster in the decider in Bilbao on Saturday, May 12, while Munster return to domestic matters after a stinging sixth European semi-final defeat since 2009.
Any thoughts of an all-Irish final quickly evaporated in the 28-degree Bordeaux heat, the travelling Munster hordes left reeling by Teddy Thomas’ blistering brace of tries and a Thomas-created third converted score from Racing captain Maxime Machenaud.
The deficit was 24-3 at half-time, Ian Keatley and man-of-the-match Machenaud trading penalties as Racing, who had lost three of their last meetings with the province, continued to be ruthlessly efficient with ex-Munster lock Donnacha Ryan a central figure.
A Machenaud penalty took his haul to 17 points before his future club-mate Simon Zebo’s 63rd-minute try sparked a revival which yielded further score from Rhys Marshall (75) and Andrew Conway (80), closing the gap to five by the final whistle.
It looked ominous for Munster when they fell behind after just four minutes. Camille Chat’s overthrow blew Racing’s first attacking opportunity, but their forwards’ powerful carrying teed up winger Thomas who handed off Alex Wootton to score in the right corner.
Machenaud’s excellent conversion made it a seven-pointer, and while CJ Stander and Stephen Archer won penalties either side of an encouraging counter attack from Wootton, Conway and Conor Murray, Munster’s decision-making was visibly off.
Out-half Keatley had a poor start, missing touch from a penalty and having a drop goal attempt charged down. Rory Scannell was wide with a subsequent drop, but Keatley got Munster on the board when punishing a Leone Nakarawa offside in the 16th minute.
Thomas was celebrating his second try soon after, his international colleague Virimi Vakatawa doing the damage with a superb surge from halfway, handing off Jean Kleyn in the process, and giving the 24-year-old speedster a simple run-in.
Racing’s hulking forwards continued to flood over the gain-line, splintering an already overworked Munster defence, and Thomas brilliantly stepped inside two defenders to gift Machenaud a 21st minute try, unselfishly passing to the scrum half behind the posts.
Munster’s ‘reliables’ were letting them down, two key lineouts going astray with Yannick Nyanga pinching one, and a series of attacks deep in the Racing 22 – with the interval approaching – were foiled with all-action centre Sam Arnold held up close to the posts.
Machenaud’s metronome right boot extended the lead with a penalty just two minutes into the second half, and Munster’s misery continued when a Marshall try was ruled out after he had run into referee JP Doyle.
With injured opensides Chris Cloete and Tommy O’Donnell keenly missed, the Munstermen were second best at the breakdown too, a rare error from Racing seeing a Machenaud penalty come back off the crossbar.
The Racing-bound Zebo lifted spirits with a high-quality finish past two defenders, equalling Anthony Foley’s Munster record of 23 European Cup tries, as Johann van Graan’s charges took advantage of Marc Andreu’s sin-binning for successive offsides.
JJ Hanrahan was wide of the target with the conversion and after fellow replacement Robin Copeland, who had the try-line in his sights, was pulled back for a forward pass from Zebo, Racing duly slowed the pace of the game again.
To their credit, Munster kept plugging away and a lineout maul snaked over in the right with replacement hooker Marshall grounding the ball. Hanrahan converted and also added the extras to Conway’s try in the final play, the province’s quarter-final hero touching down from a Zebo kick through.
The frustration was etched all over Peter O’Mahony’s face as the Munster captain reflected on another semi-final exit in Europe. It was the same feeling he experienced against Saracens at the Aviva Stadium twelve months ago, and there have also been last-four losses for the province against Leinster (2009), Biarritz (2010), Clermont Auvergne (2013) and Toulon (2014).
“I’m getting tired of learning lessons myself, personally, to be honest. They all hurt these ones. I’m just tired of losing semi-finals,” he insisted. “We struggled in the first 30 or 35 minutes. We knew Racing are very powerful when they get momentum and come out the track. We failed to stop it.
“I didn’t think we defended them well enough and we lost a lot of collisions in the first 35 minutes, which ultimately cost us on the edge. When you’re going to cough up 21 points against a side of that quality in the space of 20 minutes, you’re going to put yourself on the back foot.
“They moved the ball as a result of us not winning collisions. They’re big men, having front foot ball with a back-line like that, they’re very hard to stop. The difference with the Toulon (quarter-final) game was that we stopped their momentum-givers and in the first 35 minutes today we failed to do so.”
Munster’s South African head coach van Graan, who still has the PRO14 trophy to aim for at the end of his first season in charge, commented: “Very glad we came to this stage but it’s a very tough one to take. For Munster to get to the semi-final again, it’s a massive achievement but we wanted to go one step better this year and unfortunately it wasn’t to be. We wish Leinster and Racing all the best for the final.
“Our defence has been incredible all year but you need to produce on the day and unfortunately we didn’t have a good start and we came up maybe one or two minutes short (in the end). It’s rugby, it’s life, we’ll take it on the chin and hopefully we’ll be back this year. We had a plan today, we believed in our plan but we gave them too much of a head-start.”
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