Not to worry. Declan Kidney is always a man with a plan. In the week before the final, the nice folks were walking their dogs past both Thomond and Musgrave Park when they were taken aback by a noisy din. There wasn't a match on today, was there? No, there wasn't, but the tannoys at both grounds on different days in the buildup to the final had music blaring from them and on the field below, the Munster boys were going about their business, screaming, gesturing, pulling shirts, anything to get the message across in the nose to the person outside them.

A little bit of lateral thinking, and a couple of blaring tannoys, can go a long way.

The Vale of Glamorgan is a fine hotel.

Sure, it's not the kind of place where they turn the bed for you during the afternoon, but it does have a full size indoor pitch called the barn where you can work away to your heart's content despite the weather. They're big on covering up the sky in Wales. It's not difficult to understand why.

The Munster team know the corridors of this hotel quite well. Before the 2002 final against Leicester, they stayed at the hotel now used by the Wales squad, and having lost to the Ospreys in the Celtic League on a Friday night a few weeks back, they checked into the place that night, just so they'd all be familiar with it when they arrived the day before the final.

Not a stone left unturned.

The morning of the game they went through their usual routines and after climbing on the team bus, they drove six of the eight miles to Cardiff without a bother in the world. They could have been on a coach ride in the countryside.

Until they hit the outskirts of Cardiff.

Then, it was absolute bedlam. "We drove along for six miles no problem and then we saw our supporters outside the window and we floated the rest of the way, " said Declan Kidney.

"We kept on floating for most of the afternoon."

Expect for the first try, that is. The stadium clock was halfway towards the third minute when Philippe Bidabe bounced off John Kelly and released Sereli Bobo down the left for his flirtation with the touchline, that fortunately for him, touch judge Dave Pearson didn't appear to see. But it was Munster's reaction to that set-back that arguably won them the game.

Pure hardened experience had taught them not to panic. John Kelly came back to the huddle under the posts and told his teammates his missed tackle wouldn't happen again. His word was gospel. Then Anthony Foley told them to ensure that when they got the ball, they should do everything they could to keep it, while Paul O'Connell urged his colleagues to take a quick glance up while they were aligning defensively. You might have imagined there would have been a bit of effing and blinding, but no, it was all cool and calm stuff.

The other key moment in the game was the decision to kick for touch, rather than kick at goal. Can you ever remember Munster being so flaithiulach? "Hindsight is a great thing but it was a good call by myself and Axel to go for the corner that couple of times, " Ronan O'Gara said of Munster's decision making. "We needed to make a statement. We've learned before that you need tries to win finals.

If we kept tapping away, 7-3, 7-6, 9-7, I don't thing that's what we needed."

Those two moments . . . the calmness after the try conceded and the ambition for the tough five points rather than handy three . . . were key to Munster winning the Heineken Cup last Saturday. That, Peter Stringer's cuteness and, of course, those amazing vocal supporters. A varied selection of ingredients all mixed into one. It's the winning recipe they've been searching for all these years.

And the rest? The rest is a blur to nearly everyone involved, but the kind of blur crammed with all sorts of memories and moments, ones to make you laugh and a couple there that would even force those tear ducts to spill a few drops.

They started on the pitch minutes after the Millennium Stadium had burst its collective seams, with the youngest member of the Foley clan being introduced to the Munster public. We had to wait until his junior cup year at St Munchin's College for the son of Brendan to come to attention, but the son of Anthony, young Tony, made the limelight at a couple of days short of his 365th on this earth. But did you see how he got there? With Anthony in the middle of yet another bear hug, Donncha O'Callaghan plucked Foley junior (junior) from the stands and with the dexterity of any of his line-out catches that afternoon, he delivered young Tony, wearing a tiny Munster number eight jersey with 'Dad' across the back, to his father. It brought to mind another story of this Munster family on an evening a fair few years back. John Langford was hardly in the province a wet week and was still going through that awkward stage when Mick Galwey handed him one of his kids in a hotel lobby and told him to look after her. And he did. By the time Gaillimh came to collect the nipper, Langford felt a lot more relaxed, like he belonged. A nice little trick.

There was another fella trying to get on the pitch at around the same time.

A fair few years older than Tony Foley but with the same amount of hair. Peter Clohessy was doing his utmost to parade around with the lads but a guy with a bit of power, an aluminous yellow jacket and no rugby knowledge whatsoever was standing in this way. You might know by now that Dewi Morris slipped him his TV pass and the prop had no problems after that but as the Claw's been telling people all week around Limerick, it wasn't himself who the former England scrum-half helped out, but the security man. "There's an easy way to do this, boss, and there's a hard way, " was the gist of the conversation. Thankfully for yer man, there was the Morris way.

Barely an hour after young Foley and Clohessy's moment, a couple of hundred supporters waited outside the stadium for the team to whizz off on their bus when the match officials appeared. A dozen or so ladies made a beeline for Chris White as he strolled out and while they were getting their snaps with the English whistler, a couple of men went over to touch judge Dave Pearson, the man who thought Sereli Bobo, among his other notable attributes, was capable of hovering. "You see that line there, " one gent said while pointing at the road markings on Westgate Street. "He actually clipped that line on his way over the line, never mind the whitewash on the pitch." Pearson gave his best embarrassed laugh. What else could he do?

Then came the couple of hours drinking at the golf club near Cardiff airport, the flight home, the thousands in the arrivals hall at Shannon airport, the mini-function at the Clarion Hotel in Limerick City, the few hours sleep, the civic reception at Limerick City Hall, the open top bus through the city's streets.

And then the bonhomie amongst the squad on stage in front of the thousands standing in the rain on O'Connell Street.

They make a big point, these Munster boys, of stating in interviews how much it means to them to be playing rugby, and being successful at it, with their best friends and the comradeship was never more in evidence in Limerick on Sunday.

They were like a delirious group of teenagers on a rare trip out of the school grounds, and Marty Morrissey bore the early brunt of it.

This apparently recent rugby convert was paraded like the Heineken Cup itself when a few players got the notion in their heads to hoist him up in the air and then their gentle ribbing of Peter Stringer got an airing. If any player is being held up some above the rest of the team, they don't take too long to bring him back from orbit.

"It was a special move we have called Braveheart, " Ronan O'Gara told Limerick 95FM's Len Dineen of the scrumhalf 's try. "It's because he's so brave and he has such a big heart." O'Gara had wondered on television in the past how Stringer was capable of running so fast to make covering tackles in big games;

how did his big heart not slow him down? The theme was picked up by others. Flannery, being egged on by Tracey Piggott after the game, was another who warmed to the theme.

"He's great isn't he?" said the hooker with his tongue firmly embedded in his jaw. "Such a brave guy." There wasn't a hint of malice in it all. The general Munster rule is if they take the piss out of you, they like you.

And onwards to Monday night in Jerry Flannery's pub in Catherine Street where Vincent Browne, a Broadford, County Limerick native lest we forget (and he didn't let us) hosted his radio show. The players hanging around the place at the time . . . Flannery, Foley and Marcus Horan . . . have probably been interviewed about 40 times each since the final whistle in Cardiff but the 10pm start to the show, coupled with the loosening of the tongue that only a couple of days of celebration can truly achieve, allowed Browne to sketch a thoroughly honest appraisal of Munster's achievement.

Horan entertained with the tale of how he felt he was doubtful up until Wednesday, at which point his wife was still pouring holy water on his calf, while Brendan Foley remarked that Anthony would now be able to bore his son with tales of the how he won the Heineken Cup, just as he'd done to Anthony for the past 20-odd years.

Pat Shortt, meanwhile, who was at the game, stated that being present at Munster's coronation made up for missing out on being in the GPO in 1916.

But through all the slagging and anecdotes, there were a couple of revealing moments, not least when Foley, the current player, was asked if the crowd really did have an impact on the game. "You look at the crowd when they scored their first try and the video screen came up and the boos came out, " said the Munster captain. "And the boos came out a second time. Imagine if you were a referee how you would have felt. I said to myself, if there was a 50/50 decision later on in the game we were going to get itf we knew that if push came to shove, we had a decision in our pocket." They didn't need it but they must have been handy to know it was there.

In Limerick on Friday evening, they unveiled the future. You have to say it looks impressive. Two banana shaped stands on either side, completed by the existing terracing at both ends. When it's done it'll hold 26,000 spectators, 15,000 with their bums on seats and 11,000 on the terraces, right in the skin of opposing players, just as it's always been.

The wrecking ball is due to arrive by January next, and the hope is that the job will be finished by August 2008. It may be an optimistic schedule but when it is complete they'll have a stadium as good as any in European rugby, Stade Ernest Wallon in Toulouse arguably the new Thomond Park's only true competitor. Apparently you'll be able to see the steel structures that stand atop both sides from a good distance out, giving Limerick city something of a skyline. For a city that was designed by the same man who drew up Manhattan, it was always bound to happen.

But yesterday they had to make do with the old place although we're sure it bothered no-one. The game was a 13,000 sell-out . . . Munster's highest ever attendance for a Celtic League match . . . and as they paraded the Heineken Cup around the perimeter after the Cardiff game, the hope must surely be that crowds like that start coming to these fixtures on a regular basis.

As the players have been at pains to stress all week long, this isn't the end, this is just the beginning. With a new stadium on the way, an incredible support base to tap into and a nice, shiny piece of silverware under their arms, it's some way to start.

TRAINS, PLANES AND AUTOMOBILES: A WEEKEND TO REMEMBER

Fiona Falvey IT'S the week after victory, the "rst step in the lionising of Munster's glory in the Millennium Stadium and all in the gardens in the deep south are rosy.

The harmonisation of Munster as a single entity has been a real experience . . .and nowhere was this togetherness greater than on the road to Cardiff as a clan of 50,000 descended on the Welsh capital in the hope of getting a bed for the night. But as reality dawned that the nearest bed in a straight or jagged line from Cardiff would be Bristol, Birmingham, Chester or Stoke, the ingenuity of the Munster men and women came into play.

Two of my friends from west Cork looked on benignly as we all searched for ways to beat the air gridlock . . . "not a seat to be had" on any "ight out of Ireland into Wales or the surrounding parts of England. No problem said these two fellas. "We'll "y to Glasgow, get a plane to Cardiff and all the huf"ng and puf"ng will be avoided." Life is easy when you think around problems.

Except. Except. No one told them there were two airports in Glasgow and by the time they discovered their mistake, they had missed the "ight. So part two of the easy way to Cardiff necessitated them taking trains, taxis and planes before arriving at their destination in the dead of night. They still insisted that they had beaten the chaos.

And there was plenty of that around, believe me. A group of fellow Corkonians who had continued to look for lodgings as they travelled off the boat and up through Wales were speedily coming to the conclusion that they had as much chance of "nding a bed in the principality as Peter Stringfellow has of hosting the next eucharistic congress, when a sign caught their collective eye. A caravan for sale for the princely sum of 150 pounds.

Bought on the spot, they made their way into the heart of Wales happy that they too had beaten the system.

But with a drink or three on board and the thought of the big match bringing on a bout of giddiness and high jinks, the caravan crew could not sit still. So from around midnight til near dawn aghast locals were treated to a Fr Ted and the dancing priests episode of their very own. And not a sign of Graham Norton for this remake. Uncon"rmed reports are reaching us as we go to press that having housed up to a dozen red fans for the weekend, the caravan was later sold on for a small pro"t before its owners departed for Hibernia earlier this week.

Not so lucky were some friends of mine who could have done with a Jimmy Magee 'Memory Man' at their disposal.

Having decamped outside of Cardiff, their alcohol intake and the day's travelling led to collective amnesia. In short, they hadn't a clue where they had decamped to or how to get back there.

So they rang me at 3.30 last Saturday morning asking if I might have a clue where they should be. Looking for a quick return to sleep, I suggested the name they were looking for might begin "with an A. . ." When I saw them on Saturday, they said they had tried all night and had worked their way down to M before the locals gave up trying to help them and the fans decided that M was for Munster. And sure that's why they were there in the "rst place and, heck, sleep could wait until they had roared on their team to the Heineken Cup.