On Rugby: Seen the advance advertising from Sky Sports for the upcoming Heineken European Cup? Set to suitably emotive music and focusing exclusively on scenes from a certain day in Cardiff last May, it's hard not to feel another swell in the throat or a tingle in your back.

Second Season Syndrome it's known as. It's not even confined to sports; the second album is always seen as the trickiest for new bands on the block. But retaining a title is always harder than winning it the first time; witness the All-Ireland football championship, while even the mighty Arsenal have never retained the Premiership under Arsene Wenger.

In Munster's case, reaching their holy grail was a six- or seven-year odyssey, which demands the question: how do you follow that? With even greater difficulty, one imagines, and Trevor Halstead recently made the valid point that regardless of whether they're now a bigger scalp, Munster will probably have to play better than last season because they possibly won't get the breaks that all title-winners have to have.

It's worth bearing in mind the French, English, Welsh and Scots are all further into their seasons. For example, the biggest mitigating factor in Wayne Rooney's sluggish form until last weekend is that suspension had denied him the crucial early-season games that establish optimum fitness levels more than anything on the training ground. And let's not forget, the Irish rugby season is designed primarily with Ireland in mind, and the frontliners will be closer to optimum performance level for the autumn internationals than over the next two weekends.

Of all the 24 teams engaged in the opening round of the European Cup this weekend, it is fairly safe to say that no team has had more outside disruptions or had a more difficult build-up than Munster, through a mixture of pre-season training with Ireland carrying on into the season, and a welter of injuries.

Bearing all that in mind, their results have probably been no worse than par, in that they won the winnable games (at home to Borders when grossly understrength and at home to Ulster when most of their frontliners returned) and lost the more loseable ones, ie away to Cardiff, Glasgow and Leinster.

That was until last Friday's 21-10 defeat at home to Edinburgh. It will be recalled that after the Six Nations hiatus last season, Munster entertained Edinburgh in Thomond Park on the back of three defeats in four games and responded brilliantly to a buffeting in the first 30 minutes to earn a 36-15 win. This was the springboard to their European Cup semi-final win over Leinster the very next week.

Munster needed a restorative performance and victory last Friday, but they obtained neither. Again, there were mitigating circumstances, not least the early departure of O'Gara which compounded the absence of Paul O'Connell. Admittedly, for the five minutes or so that O'Gara - who has looked in prime nick in his two and a bit matches - was on the pitch, Munster looked much like their old selves.

Nevertheless, like never before, there is a palpable lack of confidence running through the team and without O'Gara's hand on the tiller, belief seemed to visibly drain from them as the first 50 minutes unfolded, at which point an incredulous 8,000-plus attendance could scarcely believe their side were 21-3 down, and deservedly so.

What appeared like a one-off against Leinster and a backline that can make any defence in Europe look porous, suddenly began to look more of a trend.

The defence, which had hardened so much under the tutelage of Graham Steadman, has suddenly begun to look soft again, especially out wide.

The third try conceded against Leinster, merely by dint of going wide, back up the middle and then back to the left, saw Brian O'Driscoll saunter in untouched past an outnumbered defence off a skip pass by Gordon D'Arcy. As with the bonus point try off broken play which ended with Jamie Heaslip joyously going over in the opposite corner untouched, Donncha O'Callaghan, of all people, was the last stranded man on the outside.

Against Edinburgh they survived heroically at first by dint of their scrambling, not through making all their first-up tackles or through their organisation. In their use of the ball, Munster were also strangely one-dimensional and despite the evidence of one 40-metre maul, seemingly almost reluctant to resort to what they do best, intense close-in pressure from the pack.

Instead, the unfortunate Eoghan Hickey (who had never started a League match before for either Leinster or Munster), his confidence undermined by a couple of mistakes, shuffled ball on outside or cut back in when confronted by Edinburgh's rush defence. The team with the best defence in the Magners Celtic League, who could well go to Agen this weekend and win before providing Leinster with seriously difficult opposition in Scotland in round two, rushed up and swamped them with their blitz defence.

It didn't help either that the Edinburgh match mirrored the Leinster defeat in that Munster didn't match their opponents' physicality and intensity in either the collisions/tackles or the breakdown. Indeed, their clearing out at ruck time has been unusually untidy.

That their lineout has yet to attain its customary heights can be attributed in large part to the absence of John Hayes, who has only started one game to date. And this leads us to the increasingly vexed question of the composition of the Munster backrow, if Alan Quinlan's lineout presence is to be accommodated. Either as a bit player thus far or even as a number six, Munster get nothing like the potent ball-carrying from Denis Leamy which Ireland have enjoyed this past year.

But it seems unlikely Declan Kidney would go into a game without Anthony Foley in the starting line-up or that David Wallace, their best source of go-forward ball this season, would be sacrificed.

Of course, part of Munster's problem is that they judge themselves, as does everybody else, by such high standards. Even allowing for an excessive combination of injuries and international commitments, one can never recall Munster having as poor a run of form as this, at the beginning or at any stage of a season.

Yet the European Cup carries a mystique for them and for Leinster and Ulster, by some distance the form side in Ireland. We also know that they are big-game players, and if full-on Anglo-Irish affairs in the European Cup don't concentrate the mind, nothing will.

Viewed in that context, the Leinster-Munster clash is still probably more of a reliable formguide or barometer than last week's lower key, misfiring affairs.

It had better be.