Biarritz 19 Munster 23: Red hordes' roar power overwhelms Biarritz to reach promised land

O'Connell Street in Limerick is named after Daniel, the great Irish statesman and liberator, rather than Paul, the wonderful international lock forward, although there may soon be a change of dedication. After an hour of this captivating Heineken Cup final in Cardiff, just as the Munster effort was running out of steam and the mistakes were coming thick and fast, the big screens behind the posts showed live footage of the scenes back home: thousands upon thousands of red-shirted partisans congregated in the middle of the aforementioned road, screaming like banshees in support of their local heroes. Somehow, this one clip of film changed everything.

The power of television? Let's put it this way: Marshall McLuhan would have loved it. The old Canadian know-all may not have been able to distinguish between a loose-head prop and an elk, but he understood a thing or two about the media age. Those clips of the goings-on in Limerick appeared just as the Munster support inside the ground - 50,000-strong, at a conservative estimate - was bottoming out with the dawning realisation that Biarritz were in the ascendant and perfectly capable of overturning a 10-point interval deficit. The images from the far side of the Irish Sea proved a mighty stimulus: the noise levels were amplified in an instant, the passion intensified and Munster tapped into reserves of energy they did not know they possessed.

Purists will insist the footage should not have been shown in a month of Sundays, but as the small screen rules 99 per cent of the world, why should rugby union's one per cent get away with it? Besides, the travelling Basques did not deserve, not even for a second, to deny Munster the victory they had craved for so long. Biarritz were armed with the most potent player on either side, the scrum-half Dimitri Yachvili, and two wings in Jean-Baptiste Gobelet and Sereli Bobo who, despite not being the brightest lamps in the street, had sufficient physical power to decide the outcome. Bobo was given a run at the Irish back line in the opening 90 seconds, and duly scored a try. Thereafter, he might as well have been in his native Fiji.

They are a weird lot, for sure. "Maybe we didn't appreciate the context of the game," said Patrice Lagisquet, the Biarritz coach, as if to suggest that Heineken Cup finals sneak up on highly paid strategists and take them by surprise. Lagisquet, digging a hole for himself, went on to suggest that of the two competing teams, only Munster "knew what they had to do". He ended by saying that he "could not condemn the players for losing their heads". Crikey. Alan Sugar would have been well impressed.

Biarritz, among the most ambitious clubs in France, will never have a better opportunity in this competition. They outscrummaged Munster so comprehensively that any scrum within 20 metres of the Irish line was certain to yield points, and while they struggled to subdue the excellent Donncha O'Callaghan at the line-out, the Basques were secure enough on their own throw not to fret about it. They also threatened more with ball in hand - or would have done, had they not kicked every last scrap of possession to the four winds. In short, they made life easy for their opponents, whose own offering barely extended beyond a ferocious pick-and-go routine around the fringes and some dead-eyed marksmanship from Ronan O'Gara.

In fairness, the Irishmen did what they did with considerable expertise. It took them 45 minutes to make a mistake in contact - Anthony Horgan and Ian Dowling, two lightweights on the wing, recycled the ball as surely as Jerry Flannery or Denis Leamy - and when Biarritz turned up the blowtorch, bolstered by Yachvili's faultless goal-kicking, their resilience was something to behold.

"They were bound to have a purple patch at some point," said Peter Stringer, the scorer of Munster's crucial try. "In the end, it was our defence and our discipline that won it for us."

Stringer's strike on 35 minutes was an odd affair, but no less valuable for that. Munster had already cancelled out Bobo's early finish with a try by Trevor Halstead, who muscled past Gobelet (no mean feat, given the lavish scale on which the Frenchman is constructed) after Biarritz had successfully defended one five-minute attack and then allowed Munster to mount another one with some aimless kicking. And there the scores were locked, at 10 points apiece, when Bobo went walkabout instead of defending the short side of a close-range Munster scrum and allowed Stringer to scuttle past Serge Betsen to the line. Lagisquet claimed that Julien Peyrelongue, his outside-half and organiser of the defensive line, had shouted a warning to Bobo, which was drowned out by the noise of the crowd. Frankly, the Fijian should have sorted it himself.

When Jérôme Thion got his knickers in a twist - or rather, entangled with those belonging to Damien Traille - as Shaun Payne launched a high ball into the Biarritz 22 early in the second half, Munster went 20-10 ahead. They would not score again until Yachvili had narrowed the gap to a single point, but when O'Gara landed a third penalty as a result of Census Johnson's minor indiscretion at a maul, the Basques found themselves in need of a late try. It seldom looked like materialising, thanks to the iron in the Irish soul.

"Since 1999, our people have put their hands in their pockets and spent their own hard-earned cash following us around Europe in pursuit of this title," said Munster's captain, Anthony Foley. "We feel as though we are one with them. That's the thing about this team. And the journey isn't over, either. This is just another station on the way." He is probably right. As it will take some of those gloriously intoxicated supporters 12 months to find their way back out of Cardiff, they might just well head straight for Twickenham for next year's final.

Biarritz: N Brusque; J-B Gobelet, P Bidabé, D Traille (F Martin-Aramburu, 55), S Bobo; J Peyrelongue, D Yachvili; P Balan (Johnson,

77), B August (B Noirot, 72), C Johnson (B Lecouls, 67), J Thion, D Couzinet (O Olibeau, 45), S Betsen, I Harinordoquy, T Lièvremont (capt, T Dusautoir, 54).

Munster: S Payne; A Horgan, J Kelly, T Halstead, I Dowling; R O'Gara, P Stringer; M Horan (F Puciariello, 67), J Flannery, J Hayes, D O'Callaghan, P O'Connell (A Quinlan, 80), D Leamy, D Wallace, A Foley (capt; M O'Driscoll, 77).

Referee: C White (England).