A strange week for Munster in the strangest of seasons could be about to have a very strange ending.

By the time news of a potential outbreak of Covid-19 at the Ospreys filtered through yesterday afternoon, Stephen Larkham had already fulfilled his media duties.

Despite several attempts made to contact tournament organisers, further clarity on the situation, reported by the42.ie, was not available at the time of writing. 

Should the Ospreys’ game against Benetton get cancelled, then the Italian side would likely be awarded the match points on account of them not being the team who recorded the positive Covid cases.

The Rainbow Cup hasn’t exactly been to everyone’s taste, yet Munster set their stall out early and made no secret of how much they wanted to win the tournament.

The squad were already dealing with the fallout of last weekend’s bizarre fire pit accident, which left four players with burns, before they heard that their game against Zebre on Friday night may soon be rendered a dead rubber.

As things stand, Munster do still have a chance of making next week’s Rainbow Cup final against the winners of the South African leg, yet a Benetton win of any description would see them advance. For Munster, it would be a disastrous way to end another season without a trophy.

“We set out with the Rainbow Cup to try and win it, so I think it will have a big bearing on the short history,” Larkham said.

“I think if you look at the longer history in terms of last season and the PRO14 season we’ve already started the review process on that, but we take everything into consideration.

“We’ve kept the same players on the field for this Rainbow Cup. We’ve taken the games just as seriously, so that’s the progression of our game on the back of the PRO14 last season.

“We certainly learned a lot out of that final going into Leinster and you could see that we turned that around.

“We’ve made some steps forwards and obviously the Connacht game was a step backwards but we’ll continue to improve. We know we’re on the right path.”

Depending on how the situation at the Ospreys develops, it could be next season before Munster get another chance to prove they are indeed on the right path.

When the Australian was asked if the coaching staff were feeling the pressure at the fact Munster have not lifted a trophy since 2011, Larkham responded: “Not for silverware. It’s interesting that when you talk about 10 years, the team has changed massively in those 10 years, the game has changed massively as well.

“We’ve definitely got a rich history here at Munster and we’ve tapped into that for the last couple of years.

“There’s still some guys here who have played in championship-winning teams but it’s about this group and this group moving forward and we got pretty close with the PRO14.

“We did enough to get to the final. Whether you could argue we deserved to be in the final or not, that’s up to you, but we feel we’re progressing in the right direction.

“We feel we’ve got a good squad moving forward. We think there’s good belief in the team as well.

“We certainly feel that when we get out on the paddock we can beat any team we come up against and I think that’s the first step towards realising what we want to achieve, which is definitely silverware.

“We are not hiding from that fact. We are all here trying to win something. Whether it is the Rainbow Cup or we have to wait until next year, we feel that we are on the right path at the moment.”

Regardless of what happens with the Ospreys-Benetton game, Munster’s Lions Conor Murray and Tadhg Beirne are likely to feature against Zebre in Italy.

“I think both those guys need a bit of game-time and they’re very keen to get a bit,” Larkham added. “So we’re not going to go down that route of resting them.”