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McGahan's men trail pool leaders RC Toulon by two points ahead of their mouthwatering trip to France a week on Sunday.
Anything other than a win at the Stade Felix-Mayol would take qualification out of Munster's hands and would leave the Red Army in serious danger of missing out on a place in the last eight for the first time in 13 seasons.
But McGahan remains in an upbeat mood, insisting that the clash with last season's beaten Amlin Challenge Cup Finalists was always going to be a crucial one.
"In the Heineken Cup, we all knew from the beginning of the season it was going to be an extremely difficult pool to get out of," McGahan told the Irish Times after the Magners League leaders recorded home wins over Toulon and the Ospreys but were beaten on the road in Wales and at London Irish.
"You really needed to be winning your home games and at least picking up bonus points on the road, and we've done that.
"We would have liked to have beaten London Irish or the Ospreys (away), but we had a really poor 40 minutes against London Irish when we gave away 20 points when we had the ball, and against the Ospreys we had our scrum go down. If we could have corrected a bit of that we could have got an away win, but we didn't.
"Toulon had a fabulous away win from home (against London Irish), so they're in control of the group.
"But we always knew it was going to come down to this either way. Even if we beat the Ospreys, it still would have been 14-13 on match points, so we'd still have to win there anyway.
"The reality of it was that it was going to come down to the last two rounds, and most possibly the last round, so not winning in London Irish or Ospreys, we have to do so in Toulon. But it's in our own hands."
Having experienced difficulties at scrum time in Swansea, McGahan expects Toulon to target that area when the two sides meet in the Cote d'Azur.
The Australian, who took over from Declan Kidney after Munster's most recent Heineken Cup triumph, is expecting a huge battle up front in what will be a severely hostile atmosphere.
McGahan is under no illusions as to where his side will have to improve following their Round 4 defeat to the Ospreys but he is confident that they will bounce back in typical Munster fashion.
"We expect that, that's what French sides do and that's what sides will do after watching where we've been for the last few weeks," added McGahan when asked if Philippe Saint Andre would instruct Toulon to target the setpiece.
"There's no hiding from the fact that we need to front up there and give ourselves a platform to play off, because there are other parts of our game that are working okay, so we need to get that right first off."
