Away day looms as Foley rues failure to turn pressure into points

Munster must wait to discover whether they have done enough to earn a home draw for their seventh straight Heineken Cup quarter-final, but even that unsettling scenario was secondary to the poverty of performance exercising the mind of the Irish province's captain, Anthony Foley, last night. "We've a lot of experienced players in the squad," said the Ireland No 8, "and we know if we play like this against anyone else in the competition we won't get anywhere."

Munster must wait to discover whether they have done enough to earn a home draw for their seventh straight Heineken Cup quarter-final, but even that unsettling scenario was secondary to the poverty of performance exercising the mind of the Irish province's captain, Anthony Foley, last night. "We've a lot of experienced players in the squad," said the Ireland No 8, "and we know if we play like this against anyone else in the competition we won't get anywhere."

Both Foley and Munster's Australian coach, Alan Gaffney, were at pains to deny that their poor conversion rate of a glut of good possession was influenced by the pressure to secure a try-scoring bonus point and improve the chances of staging a last-eight tie at Thomond Park.

It did not look like that in the opening quarter when Paul Burke, the former Harlequin standing in at fly-half for the injured Ronan O'Gara, was asked to put penalty kicks to touch for attacking line-outs. In the event, Munster got only halfway to the four-try target, through first-half scores by Anthony Horgan and Denis Leamy, and could lose their place among the top four seeds today to either Stade Français or, much more improbably, Newcastle.

Munster have past quarter-final wins away to Stade and Leicester to hearten them, but on this evidence they are a force on the wane, or at least in transition. With their customary hordes of red-jerseyed supporters in a record crowd for the pool stages they were going along nicely at 7-3 after Burke converted Horgan's eighth minute try. But they pushed things too far after 27 minutes and threw away a try to Ugo Monye, Quins' England Sevens flyer.

Leamy, a bulky open-side flanker recently included in Ireland's Six Nations Championship squad, threw a pass that was never on just inside the home 22 and Monye raced to the other end without a backward glance.

Dunne's conversion had Quins, already out of quarter-final contention, 10-7 ahead. Munster's next penalty was on the home 10-metre line, and Burke went for goal. He missed. It took a Quins misdemeanour, when Ace Tiatia was sent to the sin bin for coming in at the side of a ruck, to reassert Munster's advantage.

In added time before the interval Donncha O'Callaghan fielded a line-out on the right wing and, after play switched to the far left and Christian Cullen was held, Leamy wriggled his way into the corner. An increasingly frustrating second half brought only two more penalty goals for Burke.

Munster had been here in 2000 for one of their two losing Heineken Cup finals. They have also lost three semi-finals, and Quins' coach and chief executive Mark Evans predicted his opponents' wait to land the big prize would continue beyond this season. Meanwhile, Evans has moved to help right his own club's wrongs by signing the 29-year-old, five-times capped Springbok scrum-half Dave von Hoesslin from Natal.

Harlequins: G Duffy (T Williams, 59); U Monye, D James, M Deane, S Keogh; A Dunne (J Staunton, 54), S So'oialo; C Jones, A Tiatia, J Dawson, K Rudzki (R Winters, 39), S Miall, N Easter (C Dott, 39-47), T Diprose (capt), L Sherriff.

Munster: C Cullen; S Payne, M Mullins, R Henderson, A Horgan; P Burke, P Stringer; M Horan (G McIlwham, 28-31), F Sheahan, J Hayes, D O'Callaghan, P O'Connell, A Quinlan, A Foley (capt; J Williams, 73), D Leamy.

Referee: J Jutge (France).