FOLLOWING the final defeat to Leicester, Declan Kidney and Niall O'Donovan clocked out as Munster's coaches and the team they'd nurtured since the IRFU reluctantly appointed them back in the summer of 1997 was now under new care. Alan Gaffney had been confirmed as Munster's new leader back in April, and while most rugby fans would have recognised the name and face because of his time as assistant coach with Leinster, they would have known little of the Aussie's rugby roots.

Gaffney was a product of Randwick, the Sydney club with a well-earned reputation for playing the game with a bit of verve and style. A list of the club's past players reads as a who's who of Australian rugby . . . David Campese, Phil Kearns, Ewen McKenzie and the Ella brothers all wore the club colours at various stages. It's a proud club with proud traditions, none more so than the fact that the club's head coach is directly elected by the players.

Alan Gaffney filled that role between 1989 and 1995, before going to work as an assistant coach with the New South Wales Waratahs for two years from 1997 onwards and then travelling across the globe to become Matt Williams's side-kick with Leinster in 2000. His CV was impressive, his pedigree and quality unquestionable, but even the man himself had to think long and hard when Munster came knocking at his door that spring.

"It was a very tough decision at the time. I was in a comfort zone at Leinster, " says Gaffney. "I was coaching some very talented people in their backline and there was no drama there. It wasn't a chore going to work, I was working with some great players, not just your Dricos and your D'Arcys, Nathan Spooner was there and there were a few other top backs also.

I thought to myself, 'Do I really want to be going out there and doing too many things?'

But there was a mantra I've always used throughout my life as a coach and it's one I say to players again and again: 'Never die wondering'. And with a mantra like that, I would have been hypocritical if I didn't take up the challenge. So all this was going through my mind and then Leinster came in with a new deal and an increased salary and that confused me even more. But I went ahead with my initial decision, although I have to say it was with some trepidation . . . a lot of trepidation in fact."

Gaffney admits that during his two seasons as assistant at Leinster, Munster had been a sort of fascination for him. "I looked at Munster and I'd just admired them for so long. But despite my admiration, I was still looking at them as an outsider and saying, 'How in God's name do they do it, I just don't understand'. I'd coached in a number of games against them and they'd always come from nowhere to beat us. At Donnybrook one day we totally outplayed them and then Killian Keane kicked a penalty on 88 minutes to earn them a draw. It was baffling.

Another day we were playing down in Musgrave and I thought, we're on top here and then we got thrashed. I couldn't explain it. And I kept wondering how they were doing what they were doing. I just didn't see the quality in the team. I couldn't understand why they were getting to the finals in Europe. There was something down there that I just wasn't seeing and I thought to myself, I just had to go down to see what it was."

The changes Gaffney was implementing on the pitch . . . principally making the team play with a bit more width . . . took a while to sink in. A nervy Heineken Cup pool campaign saw Munster suffer a disastrous opening day defeat to Gloucester at Kingsholm, and while victories over Perpignan at home, and Viadana both at home and away, steadied the ship somewhat, a defeat at the hands of the French side at Stade Aime Giral left Munster all but out of contention for a quarter-final slot.

"We played like busted arses in that game, " recalls Gaffney. "We were poor and we handed Perpignan points very easily. It was one of our worst displays. We knew we had to win both of our games to qualify for the knockout stages and we came off that field as dejected as we've ever come off the field, except maybe the game against Wasps. Everybody thought that was the end of our season. The trip home was an absolute nightmare. People still come up to me now and say, 'Alan, have you ever been as depressed as you were that day against Perpignan?' I don't think I ever have been so low. I was thinking, 'Jeez, I've come down here and totally stuffed up'. On the way back we started to work out what we needed to do to qualify and we were thinking, 'How do we even start worrying about this?' We were all but out."

The permutations may have been complicated but Munster put them to one side in the build-up to the Gloucester game and went about figuring out a way of beating the in-form Premiership leaders. "We just had to take them on, " says Gaffney of the challenge. "We realised we'd been beaten up in the first game and we knew our forward pack was a lot better than what we showed that day. In certain parts of the pitch we believed Mercier was weak, we believed that Henry Paul could be tested under a high ball at full-back, we understood where Delport came in off the blind side, we understood that if we scrummaged right we could put them under pressure. That's why we worked so hard on the scrum coming into the game."

Their gameplan nailed down, the tone of the pre-match meetings was important.

Munster needed to get the right mix between blind rage and controlled aggression. If they delved too deep into either area, they'd struggle. Frankie Sheahan took care of pumping the blood, bringing in a couple of newspaper articles that had been heavily critical of Munster's efforts in Perpignan. He also unearthed an article written by Jeremy Guscott stating the Gloucester pack would blow Munster away.

It was like a red rag to a bull, and not just John Hayes. Someone else produced a quote from Andy Gomarsall saying that he was actually looking forward to playing a game at Thomond Park. Nobody looked forward to playing at Thomond Park.

Then came the reasonably controlled segment of their preparations. Jerry Holland, Brian Hickey, Mick Galwey and Gaffney all started to talk about Munster's home record in the Heineken Cup and the importance of keeping it intact. It struck a chord with the players. Nobody wanted to be wearing a red jersey the day the first visiting side struck gold in Limerick. It also succeeded in moving the focus away from the four tries and 27 points, winning the game was the most important goal.

On the morning of the match, the rain poured down but Gaffney had a few distractions to deal with. At the Clarion Hotel, somebody handed him a piece of paper which was supposed to have been left in the back of a taxi by a member of the Gloucester backroom team. It, apparently, contained details of the visitors' gameplan.

Over the course of time, this famous sheet of paper has come to assume legendary status but in fact, it was one of the day's greatest myths.

"Somebody showed me a bit of paper, " Gaffney admits, "but it was just Gloucester's generic way of playing the game.

'We'll kick right from this position, we'll do this from re-starts', but it wasn't a gameplan and if it was, it wasn't very detailed.

It was just one sheet of paper. This was about 11 o'clock in the morning and to this day, I'm serious when I say this, this is not a word of a lie, I read the first couple of lines and discarded it. It was just generic stuff, there was no detail at all in it. It was a nothing and if you think I was going to change our plans that late in the day, you'd be wrong. They can bang on about how that lost gameplan cost them but that didn't cost them, a lot of other things did on the day but not that."

The other distraction for Gaffney was the match programme. It contained an article written by Heather Kidd, wife of former Irish coach Murray, stating that Munster "must score three more tries than Gloucester and beat them by more than 19 points".

A confusing situation had just been made a hell of a lot worse.

"The guys did know what they had to do, " Gaffney insists, "but then that article was written in the programme that was completely wrong. In the heat of the moment a lot of the team were thinking, 'Were we right or was the programme right?' We did know what we needed to do, we worked it out on the way back from Perpignan, but that article just confused us. That article, which I really hold people responsible for, was poor form. It wasn't just her, whoever proof read that programme was at fault too. For that to be put in there in an incorrect way was poor form."

But if some of Munster's players weren't totally sure what they needed to do to qualify for the quarter-finals when they took to the field, it didn't really matter. They just wanted to beat Gloucester and scoring a single point more than the English side would ensure that they did just that.

In front of a raucous crowd who appeared just as keen to hold onto Thomond Park's glorious record, Munster looked pretty focused from Joel Dume's first whistle.

Ronan O'Gara and Ludovic Mercier exchanged penalties early on but then the home side took control. They opted for scrums in situations where previously they'd have run the ball or kicked for touch and that gave them the early initiative.

The move for John Kelly's opening try came straight off the training ground.

They'd identified that Thinus Delport drifted off his wing almost by reflex and Peter Stringer found his winger with a superblytimed pass. The rest was academic. But while that first try was easy, the next one was a long time in coming. Munster huffed and puffed through the rest of the half, spending much of it in their own territory, but they upped the ante as the first half ticked towards a conclusion. Jeremy Staunton and Ronan O'Gara both had a dart at the Gloucester defence and just as they seemed to be running out of options, Jason Holland threaded a grubber kick in behind the visitors' line and Mossie Lawlor pounced for the try.

"That was the vital try, " Gaffney maintains. "It was only when we scored that and went in 16-6 up that I actually felt the whole thing was on. But the important thing was that we kept doing what we were doing, that we didn't start to take stupid risks. If we started to panic, everything would be up in the air again."

But there was no panic and no risks.

They stuck to the gameplan and O'Gara kicked a penalty to make it 19-6. Then Holland lobbed a cross kick in the direction of Mick O'Driscoll on the right touchline and the second row somehow grabbed the ball and fell over the line in one swift movement. O'Gara landed the convert and Munster were just one step away from glory. Or were they? Gloucester were awarded a penalty in front of the Munster posts, a number of the visiting players pumped their fists in the air, but Ludovic Mercier was completely oblivious to what the kick meant and he took the penalty quickly. Nothing came of it. It was a stroke of luck.

Munster regrouped and plugged away, battling for that all-important fourth try.

Half the crowd and indeed, half the players on the pitch, thought that three tries would be enough but it wasn't and Jim Williams knew it. He directed O'Gara to kick a late penalty to the corner, Mick O'Driscoll grabbed the line-out and the subsequent maul was halted just short of the line. Jeremy Staunton had a go around the fringes but after he was tackled, the recycled ball fell to Jason Holland and he put John Kelly over. Thomond Park blew its top and while confusion still reigned, O'Gara knocked over the convert to leave the final score at 33-6. That was a 27-point gap and they had the four tries in the pocket.

The miracle had just been performed in front of 13,500 ecstatic supporters.

There was still confusion in the crowd.

Some thought they'd done it, others had been so baffled by the programme that they didn't know who to believe. But the behaviour of the players confirmed that Munster were in the draw for the play-offs. Most were carried across the pitch on the shoulders of supporters, fists pumping the air in delight. And while that sufficed for some fans, others weren't satisfied until they saw the team re-emerge from the dressing room to mount the Thomond Park steps and sing a few verses of 'Stand Up And Fight'.

"They came to Thomond Park not expecting to be beaten, " believes Gaffney.

"They came there as the runaway leaders of England. To be completely honest, the biggest mistake they made was not treating Munster with respect. They treated us with total disrespect and most of the players will say the same thing. It wasn't their spectators, they were absolutely fantastic before and after the game but their players showed us no respect whatsover. It played right into our hands."

As for the rest of the night, it was one of Limerick's most memorable, arguably up there with the celebrations that followed that famous victory back in 1978. "The whole scene in the city that night was so bloody special, " recalls Gaffney. "It was one of the most memorable nights of my life. No question about that. For me, I think I was more relieved than anybody else in the whole city that night, just relieved that we'd qualified again, that I hadn't screwed things up."