IF only Edinburgh had a scrum. When was the last time you read those words? Yet the fact is that in a game where they gave as good as they got for long periods in open play in Ireland yesterday, it was the set-piece and in particular the scrum that scuppered them.

Not only that, Alan Solomons admitted he will have to do something to solve the tighthead prop crisis that means WP Nel, who had to be rested against Munster, is the only fit specialist they have after Kevin Bryce seemed to suffer an elbow injury that could put him out for some time.

Even worse for Solomons, fly-half Duncan Weir, whose recent form could put him back in the Scotland frame, also came off hurt, although the head coach was unsure how serious the damage was. With Jason Tovey and Phil Burleigh also injured, he could be down to bare bones there too.

But for the scrums, Edinburgh might have been in with a chance in a game that went on for 129 minutes from start to finish with two serious injuries and a lot of stoppages.

“The major thing was our lack of a tighthead prop,” Solomons said. “Alan Dell filled in there and did a superb job but he is only 106kg and has not played there since he was 19. That was the difference between the teams. We land up in serious trouble.

“We need to get tightheads into the club urgently. We have been doing some work in the background on the issue but now we need to address it urgently.”

The game started badly for Edinburgh and got steadily worse. The first scrum went down and the experiment of giving Bryce his first outing at tighthead was in trouble, when he got lengthy treatment on his arm and left the field a few minutes later.

That did seem to spark Edinburgh into life and as long as they could keep the ball away from the tight, they were looking good. They even managed to take the lead when Munster No 8 CJ Stander spilled the ball in a tackle and centre Chris Dean, making his first start of the season, picked up and raced 50 yards for his second try for the club.

At this stage, it was the old Munster battle between the home pack and the opposition’s willingness to run the ball but the home side got back into the game as it approached the half-hour mark.

The forwards held the ball at the back of the scrum to drive 10 yards for the simplest of push-over tries for scrum-half Conor Murray.

It got even worse again for Edinburgh when they forced a scrum on their own line, but it was under so much pressure that their scrum-half, Sam Hidalgo-Clyne, spilled the ball,and it ricocheted around the Edinburgh goal line until Murray got to it and was judged to have done enough to ground it.

Edinburgh were under so much pressure at this stage and defending for so long that it was inevitable a simple missed tackle would come, the one that did giving Munster replacement flanker Conor Oliver an easy run-in.

Munster made hard work of getting the bonus-point try, even with Dell, who had replaced Bryce, sin-binned for too many scrum offences near his own line.

Weir bravely held Stander up to stop him grounding the ball and then Stander lost possession going for the line. In the end, though, there was no stopping Dave O’Callaghan after another lengthy period of pressure and another weak tackle.

The big positive for Edinburgh was that they did not let that dampen their spirit.

They proved in the final quarter, as both sides rang the changes, that they could damage Munster in the open, eventually working replacement flanker John Hardie over the line to give themselves some hope of at least rescuing a bonus point.

It did not come but at least Solomons could point to the fighting spirit as a plus. “The heads never went down, we pulled ourselves up and had a chance to get a bonus point,” he said. “That was the most pleasing feature.”