I went to see the film 127 Hours last week. If you have not heard about it, it is the story of Aron Ralston, a rock climber/ potholer who wanders off at weekends to explore canyons and sleep out under the stars.

Aron Ralston is self-centred and arrogant, loves his own company and believes that he is invincible. He doesn’t return his mother’s phone calls and never tells anybody where he is going. All this was fine until the inevitable happened; one weekend, while walking through a narrow gorge in the canyons a rock gave way under his feet. He fell several feet down a gorge, followed by some very large boulders. After the dust and the boulders settled, Ralston was trapped with his hand firmly stuck between a boulder and the side of the gorge. He was literally, (as he called his book) stuck between a rock and a hard place.

As you can guess from the film’s title, his ordeal lasted 127 hours. That was the amount of time it took him to realise that there was only one way out of his predicament – to cut off his by then smelly and rotten hand. In theory, he could have taken the decision to do this at any time during the ordeal. The reality is different. Nobody will take an extremely unpalatable decision, no matter how correct, until the alternatives, in this case certain death, become worse.

I enjoyed the film. Anyone who is familiar with the work of Alfred Hitchcock would appreciate the air of suspense that ran through the film. The end was inevitable and it was just a matter of how the hero Aron Ralston, would cope with getting there. After the show, I posted a message on my Facebook page telling my nieces and nephews across Ireland and the World that I had seen the film would recommend them to see it. I finished the message by saying “the moral of the film is always tell somebody where you are going, and always carry a Swiss Army knife.” One of them replied “but of course, forewarned is …eh…forearmed!”

It would have made a lovely symmetry for this column if Munster’s competitive rugby season was 127 days old last Sunday. It wasn’t; the season is a week older at 134 days. But I’ll stick with the analogy for the time being. Before anyone jumps to conclusions here, I am not suggesting that the Munster rugby team are self-centred or arrogant or believe that they are invincible. Munster’s record over the entire history of Irish Rugby shows that they have always been the epitome of what a great team should be.

My point is that after Munster’s defeat to Toulon in the Heineken Cup last Sunday, the web blogs, and Facebook and Twitter comments are crying out for the heads of the coaching staff. The coaching staff has been accused of acting like Aron Ralston. That they knew what had to be done to improve the team, but put off doing anything in the hope that fate would intervene and make everything alright. Now it is too late, fate did not play its hand (pardon the pun!) and major surgery is needed in order to restore Munster to the quarter-finals of next seasons, Heineken Cup.

This is a very simplistic view. Ok, Munster played poorly last Sunday, and they probably chose the wrong tactics, if not the wrong team. But would they have won against a crack Toulon side even if they changed tactics? I doubt it.

Let’s go back three to five years for a few moments. Between 2005 and 2008 when Munster won two Heineken Cups, they rarely had a bad injury. In fact, the coach Declan Kidney was sometimes criticised for not even using players on the bench. Since the last Heineken Cup final win in 2008 however, Munster have been poxed with injuries. A friend pointed out to me that when Munster played the Ospreys in the last Heineken Cup game the starting 15 included only five of the team who won the 2008 Heineken Cup final. Consistency in team selection is one of the factors that contribute to a winning team. If the core of the team keeps changing because of injuries it is almost impossible to maintain good form and thereby win long sequences of top class games.

Munster has been creeping towards last Sunday’s defeat for most of the last 127 days. Yet I doubt if major surgery is what is needed to fix the situation. Munster have a stack of good players coming through. They are runaway leaders of the Magners League and even though they might be caught in the play-off stages of this competition, the week-to-week form suggests that the core of the squad is improving all the time.

The Munster ‘A’ went to Nottingham on Friday night last in the British and Irish Cup competition and came away with an excellent win. Munster reached the final of this 24-team competition last season and are going well again this year. The coach of this team is Anthony Foley, who no doubt is gaining valuable experience as a coach with what is the next generation of Munster players.

Finally, despite last Sunday’s defeat, Munster can still end up in the Amlin Challenge Cup if they win against London Irish next weekend and finish runner’s up in their Heineken Cup pool. If they do qualify they could have games against the likes of Brive, Harlequins or Stade Francais Paris. In the context of rebuilding the Munster squad, the Amlin Challenge Cup is probably the best competition they could find themselves for the remainder of this season.

Contrary to popular opinion in the blogs and in Facebook, I believe that Munster are not in the same drastic situation that Aron Ralston found himself in 127 Hours. Extreme surgery is not called for. Munster can ease their way out of the current crisis. In fact, I would go so far as to say that within three seasons, the failure to qualify for this season’s Heineken Cup quarter-final and Munster’s likely performances for the rest of this season will seen the turning point in the winning of the next Heineken Cup title. You have been forewarned.