Munster skipper is driven by the fear of falling

No disrespect is meant to Saracens, but something will have gone seriously wrong if Munster's towering captain finishes tomorrow's European Cup semifinal in a state of anguish, having been eliminated by the eighth-best team in the English Premiership.

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His raw mix of emotions offers a revealing insight into the forces driving the Lion from Limerick towards ensuring his native province recapture the Heineken crown they lost last year.

"If any particular match doesn't go well, you'd be replaying moments in your head for the rest of the week," he said. "It's very hard to get over until you get back out and you play a big game again and you bury the demons."

Some are harder to bury than others, like those from Ireland's excruciating World Cup failure in France. Six months on and the impression lingers that they will still take a lot of exorcising.

"That World Cup, will we ever get over it?" said O'Connell, typically not ducking the sorest point of all. "We went in with such high aspirations and it turned out to be a big disappointment. It's one which will be very hard to look back on at the end of our careers.

"Under the weight of expectation, we failed to perform. That's something which is going to weigh on us for a long time. All you can do is move on, which is what we've done at Munster.

"For me, it's been tough because I had a back injury so I couldn't even go in and train hard like 'Donners' (his second row partner and fellow Lion, Donncha O'Callaghan)."

Judging by his team's ruthless elimination of Gloucester in the quarterfinal at Kingsholm, O'Connell is back to his old self. But he will never fall into the trap of talking his team up at Sarries' expense, as the Ospreys did.

Munster are big on respecting the next opponent, even if this one did concede six tries at home to Wasps last Sunday.

O'Connell said: "They did score five themselves, against the team with the best defence in England. And we scored three in two games against the same team.

"Saracens probably have the best scrum in England and outstanding players like Richard Hill, Cobus Visagie, Kris Chesney, Ben Skirving and Hugh Vyvyan."

Be that as it may, Munster in another final is no more than the game has come to expect from a leader whose competitive streak has prompted stand off Ronan O'Gara to call him 'Keano' after another footballing son of Munster, Roy Keane, who will probably be at the clash at Coventry's Ricoh Arena tomorrow.

O'Connell, 29 this year, is out of the same mould. There is a story from the World Cup that one day three players put their names down for a game of Monopoly. When they discovered O'Connell had added his, the three duly removed theirs.

"That's just Donncha trying to get me into trouble," he laughs. "I'd say he's nearly worse than me because he's a seriously competitive animal as well.

"You look at the skills of Doug Howlett, Ronan O'Gara and Rua Tipoki and it stands out a mile why they are successful. I suppose, for some of us, the strength is our competitive nature."

Munster's surrender of the trophy at Llanelli last year led to a crisis meeting, forcing them to change their philosophy and broaden their style with a trio of Polynesian backs to complement their pack.

"Once we won the Heineken Cup, our attitude to the competition and what it meant to us changed," O'Connell said, at his team's base on Limerick's university campus.

"We'd been on an emotional journey when we told ourselves that, even if we weren't good enough to win it, we were going to win it, no matter what, because we just wanted it more than anything else.

"Last season was a very strange one. We beat Leicester away and Cardiff away but there seemed to be something missing.

"After losing at home to Leicester and not getting past the quarterfinals, we had a big end-of-season meeting. We looked at everything, from game plans to fitness.

"We realised we couldn't rely on this emotional journey stuff all the time. We needed to be better players, better prepared physically than the opposition. Against Wasps this season, we were twice ahead by 10 points without finishing it off, but the bones of a seriously good performance were there.

"At Clermont we scrapped and got a bonus point. The quarter-final was another good performance based on a real appetite.

"Having had the European Cup in our bag two seasons ago, that appetite means the motivation is now coming from somewhere else. A bit of the edge which was missing last season is back and that comes from an ambition to do more than win this competition just once."

Saracens apart, nobody in his right mind would bet against them.

SARACENS: Haughton; Leonelli, Sorrell, Powell, Ratuvou; Jackson, De Kock (capt); Lloyd, Cairns, Visagie, Vyvyan, Chesney, Gustard, Hill, Skirving. Substitutes: Ongaro, Johnston, Ryder, Barrell, Rauluni, Ross, Scarbrough.

MUNSTER: Hurley; Howlett, Mafi, Tipoki, Dowling; O'Gara, O'Leary; Horan, Flannery, Hayes, O'Callaghan, O'Connell (capt), Quinlan, Wallace, Leamy. Substitutes: Sheahan, Pucciariello, O'Driscoll, Ryan, Stringer, Warwick, Murphy.

Referee: Nigel Owens (Wales).

TV: Sky Sports 2, 2.30pm (kick-off 3.0).