‘It hasn’t been a straightforward week’ – Graham Rowntree not using Munster illnesses as excuse for Northampton defeat

But the former England prop said his side must take responsibility for the errors that cost them so dear as they failed to score after half-time at Franklin's Gardens to exit the competition before the quarter-finals for the second successive season.

Sitting beside Rowntree at his post-match press conference, captain Tadhg Beirne was barely able to speak through the fits of coughing while scrum-half Craig Casey vomited on the pitch before the start of the second-half.

“Frustrated. I spoke to the lads afterwards about... I keep using this expression - 'giving them presents, giving them freebies',” he said.

“Some big moments there where they were that good on transition when we dropped the ball or made an error and they were gone.

“There were some big swings in the game where we could have scored a try if someone held a pass, we would have scored, but they won the ball back and a few phases later, they scored. So those errors, I thought we gifted them.

“I'm proud of our effort. We stuck in there, a proper game of rugby.

“It's not been a straightforward week in terms of availability and illness.

“As you can hear from my man (Beirne) here, it's not been the most straightforward but we rolled our sleeves up and got on with it for a big game against a great team. I'm proud of our effort but we'll sit down and look at how we don't give away those presents.”

Rowntree chose not to elaborate on the virus that ruled RG Snyman out of the game, insisting that they still could have won as his focus switches to retaining the URC.

“No, not really, there's nothing to elaborate on,” he said.

“We had a bit of a bug going around the group. We will regroup this week and have a look at what we're doing. I was just talking to Tadhg about what we will not do this week, rather than what we will do.

“We will regroup and then we're down to South Africa for two weeks. Two huge games again in South Africa and we'll get on with it. We'll dust ourselves down, see what we can fix, and drive on.”

Beirne backed up his coach's comments about not using the illness as an excuse.

“Look, people get sick, that's part of life,” he said.

“You just get on with it. As Wig (Rowntree) alluded to, there was a bit of sickness going around.

“That happens in team environments where we're scrumming down against each other and all that kind of stuff. Lads are going to pick up bugs but that's not the reason we lost today. We went out there, went toe to toe with Saints, they just got the upper hand. We'll have to take that on the chin.

“It was a battle, wasn't it? You saw in the first half how tight it was and even in the second half, the game was on a knife edge for the majority of it.

“We go from having them in their 22 to all of a sudden they're scoring. It's moments like that we'll look back on and be very frustrated with. But I can't fault the lads' effort. It was certainly a battle but we came out on the wrong side of it.”