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Munster’s John Hodnett celebrates his try. Billy Stickland/INPHO
Champions Cup
Munster finish strong as tries from Bleuler and Hodnett topple Saracens at Thomond
Two quick-fire second-half scores turned the game in Limerick.
7.34pm, 11 Jan 2025
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The 42
Reports from Thomond Park
Munster 17
Saracens 12
FOR A LONG time this looked like being one of those nights for Munster. Saracens came to Thomond Park sensing opportunity and with close to an hour played it was shaping up nicely for the visitors. Mark McCall’s men led 9-3 and had looked comfortable defending whatever Munster threw at them.
The 22,000-strong home crowd was tense. They had watched their team battle hard but repeatedly shoot themselves in the foot, letting their unforced errors rise while struggling to find the killer touch in the Saracens half.
A game in which Munster had never led was slipping out of reach with next weekend’s trip to face Northampton Saints looking increasingly daunting.
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Then Munster came alive, with two quickfire scores from Dian Bleuler and John Hodnett in the 59th and 64th minute flipping the game and sending Munster on their way to victory.
Come full time The Fields of Athenry was ringing around the ground and it felt like one of those great European days in Limerick.
The province now sit second on 10 points in Pool 3, one off Northampton ahead of their trip to Franklin’s Gardens next weekend.
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………. what is the betting that not one of them will have a legitimate mandate. We live in a post-democratic age, it is disturbing to see how many accepted this.
We have the man who fudged Greece’s books, so they could get in to the Euro, while he was the head of their banking system made leader. It is like having Sean Fitzpatrick rammed in as leader of this state by Europe.
It will either go down in history as the start of a dark but temporary blot on European democratic history or else as a great day for Europe, written by our new technocratic masters in the future, the corporatization of the continent. There used to be a name for the merging of corporate power and State control in to one entity. A predecessor of this man invented it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnTOiso08HM
Good link Tim,thanks for sharing it.
The mention of the ‘intense talks’ by Monti begs the question as the what bribes were offered, by bribes I mean offers of position and power.
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