Peter Jackson's semi-final review

It will stay there in all its red, white and blue finery for the next three weeks at least, a shining symbol of French mastery of the Heineken Cup as well as an early indication of the monopoly extending to the continent's other international club tournament, the reinvented Amlin Cup.

The meteorological phenomenon took fewer than 48 hours to create in defiance of continental downpours, starting on Friday evening in Connacht where Toulon did just enough before the sun went down on Galway Bay to grope their way through the last half hour of a fraught semi-final after nightfall.

Toulouse had done their bit the next day towards making European an Irish-free zone by relieving holders Leinster of their most treasured possession in teeming rain when the Basques joined forces on both sides of the Franco-Spanish border to eliminate the mightiest of all Irish provinces.

Munster had never lost a semi-final anywhere in France, or Spain for that matter, by anything other than a single point, to Stade Francais in Lille in 2001 and Toulouse in Toulouse two seasons later. By the time Biarritz finished with them on a wet day when San Sebastian did its best to look like Limerick, the seventh-ranked French team had pummelled them into submission.

Nobody is supposed to do that to Munster, not when they have the serried ranks of the Red Army to bellow out the battle-hymn, Stand Up and Fight.

Never, in all their journeys across the Irish Sea, had they seen anyone stand up and fight back the way the man in the Hannibal Lecter mask did on Sunday afternoon.

When history comes to judge the definitive Heineken Cup tales of courage above and beyond the call of duty, Imanol Harinordoquy's will stand comparison with the bravest.

Like a prize-fighter who never knows when he's beaten, the Biarritz No. 8 went down in the opening minutes and somehow kept going for more than an hour.

By then the man grudgingly referred to by his British admirers as the 'Hairy Donkey' had taken at least six long counts. None of them had anything to do with the elaborate scaffolding assembled around his head and face to protect the nose broken on his previous appearance, against Racing Metro in Paris a fortnight earlier.

The bandaging did not stop there. Rolls of the stuff covering the considerable length of his left leg increased the mummified effect, strengthening the impression of a team whose sheer desperation made them gamble on a man literally stuck together by sticking plaster and sellotape.

The Biarritz coaches knew their man would bust a gut for the cause but they had not imagined he would go beyond that and crack a rib or two for good measure. That meant more bandaging during the internal and by the time the pain finally became too much even for Harinordoquy to bear, in the 66th minute, he had just seen Dimitri Yachvili's third penalty obliterate Munster's lead from Keith Earls' converted try.

By then, the indomitable Basque had moved his team of underdogs to turn the tide in a way which reduced Munster, for so long the supreme masters of iron will and rigid self-discipline, to a state of submission which they had not experienced since their rise among the big players in Europe at the turn of the century. Long before the unforgiving Yachvili picked them off with three more penalties, Munster had been made to look docile. Harinordoquy bowed out with one hand clutching the lower ribs on his left side, the other clenched into a fist which he shook at the rest of his pack. The symbolic gesture said it all: 'We've got them by the throat. Whatever you do, don't let go.'

No substitution turned the tide more than Fabien Barcella's arrival in the Biarritz front row for the final quarter. It signalled the crushing of the Munster scrum highlighted by Benoit August taking a strike against the head.

By then his opposite number, Jerry Flannery, had been guilty of starting the indiscipline which had a contagious effect on the likes of Denis Hurley in allowing Yachvili to pick the Irishmen off, goal by goal.

Six times he took aim and six times one of the cutest operators in the game pointed his finger to the sky, acknowledging what he called his 'lucky star.' Like Leinster before them, Munster had been badly undone by the power of a French scrum.

Where the reigning champions had paid for their decision to start without C J van der Linde, Munster were so overwhelmed in the tight that they ended up pulling down a maul for Yachvili to nail penalty No. 6 in the last minute.

Harinordoquy, still grimacing from the touchline, made it back onto the pitch at the end to be greeted by a handshake and half-embrace from Alan Quinlan, one old warrior recognising another and acknowledging the uncomfortable truth, that Munster had been beaten at their own game.Mick O'Driscoll, acting captain in Paul O'Connell, knew as much and, to his credit, told it as it was.

'We pride ourselves in our set-piece and it just wasn't good enough,' he said before making an admission which said it all. 'We will hold our hands up and admit it. The best fifteen players on the pitch were all from Biarritz.'

End of story but not for Les Bairrots. If they were lucky to survive the Ospreys in the quarter-final at the same Estadio Anoeta, as they unquestionably were, there could be no doubting the worthiness of their passage into a second Heineken final, at the Stade de France on May 22. They go there despite a relatively grim record in the Top 14 and asemi-final performance which will hardly disturb the sleep of their opponents, Toulouse.

A third all-French final in seven seasons says everything about Le Championnat as head and shoulders over the Guinness Premiership and the Magner's League. For French clubs, there has not been a weekend quite like it, one which began with Toulon running out into the unusual Galway sunshine with the tannoy announcer blaring out a historic message 'Welcome to the most exciting rugby game ever to be played in Galway.' John Muldoon's unsung, often neglected province, did themselves and Ireland proud only to come up infuriatingly short of taking the tie into extra-time. Within 24 hours, the last English hope, Wasps, had followed them out of the Amlin, unable to cope with the resurgence which has taken Cardiff Blues from Heineken Cup also-rans into potentially the first Welsh winners of a European trophy.

Their success in outpointing Wasps at Adams Park 2-0 on tries explains why the Tricolors' rainbow cannot be seen over the Welsh capital.According to Toulon's head coach, Philippe Saint-Andre, more than 50,000 home fans will be at the Stade Velodrome in Marseille on May 23, raising the prospect of more than 130,000 watching both French finals over the same weekend.

That a team as flawed as Biarritz have made it without being anywhere near their best ought to be ominous for their British and Irish victims. 'Terrible game or not, it's pretty amazing,' Jack Isaac, their Australian coach, said. 'We didn't use the ball as we should have gone and I wasn't expecting us to dominate the way we did.'

Neither were Munster. Instead of Paris being festooned in 40 shades of green, as some fool suggested in this column last week, it will be painted red by familiar domestic rivals who last met there before 80,000 in the French Grand Final four years ago when Biarritz thumped the mighty Toulousains 40-13.

Provided Harinordoquy doesn't run out of bandages, who is to say they won't do it again....?