As with so many situations in life, it is easy to say what is wrong, and considerably less easy to say how to put it right.

It is easy to get hot under the collar about the highly dramatic but basically unsatisfactory way that Sunday's Heineken Cup semi-final between Leicester Tigers and Cardiff Blues was settled, but difficult to apply the cold light of reason to come up with a better way.

After 80 minutes of normal time and 20 minutes of extra-time had left the Tigers and the Blues still locked at 26-all, the match was settled by rugby's equivalent of a penalty shoot-out – the first seen in this country and the first since the French Cup final of 1984 – and no-one was particularly happy about it.

Winning Leicester captain Geordan Murphy was pragmatic: "This is not the way I would have wanted to get through to the Heineken Cup final – but we'll take it."

Losing Cardiff centre Tom Shanklin was, not surprisingly, aghast: "How can you end a competition like that?

"The shoot-out made the game a lottery. I know it is the same for both sides but it shouldn't come down to that".

The coaches were equally uneasy; Richard Cockerill, the Tigers' new coach, should have been ecstatic at seeing his side through to another European final, yet all he felt was "a bit hollow".

While he admitted that it was "unfair on both sides", his opposite number Dai Young expressed the general opinion of rugby folk: "It's not a great way to win and it's a worse way to lose."

But the Blues supremo also reflected a general helplessness. "It was a horrible way to go out, but somebody had to win".

The pundits will argue for ever and a days as to whether there is a better way to settle a match that is so level.

The countback , which saw Brive beat Toulouse on tries scored when the French teams had found themselves in an identical Heineken Cup semi-final situation in 1998, would not have settled this particular match.

The "golden score", or , depending on your viewpoint, "sudden death", would have provided a messy ending for television and, like the idea of gradually removing a player from each side to increase the likelihood of a score, would have taken a huge physical toll on players who had already put their bodies on the line for 100 minutes.

Former England hooker Brian Moore obviously had that consideration uppermost when he opined that "it would be fairer, but far less dramatic, to toss a coin".

He was also expressing a forward's fellow-feeling for Martin Williams, whose missed kick for Cardiff – set against Jordan Crane's successful effort for Leicester – cost the Blues the match.

That was echoed by Shanklin, whose own penalty kick had been successful: "It was hard enough for a back like me to go up there and take a shot, but forwards should not be asked to do it."

The extension of that argument would demand that the respective kickers would take shots at goal until one of them failed.

Granted the cows might come home sooner than some of the game's top marksmen might miss the target, that at least would leave a more satisfactory feeling.

Matches are often decided by goal-kickers. This would simply be a more concentrated example.

Leaving the penalty shoot-out to the best goalkicker from each side would also cut out the sharp practice that has sullied two wonderful Heineken Cup matches.

Tigers' coach Cockerill congratulated himself on an "intelligent" use of the replacement laws, which enabled him to get one of his better goalkickers, Julien Dupuy, back onto the pitch in time for the penalty shoot-out.

The only way he could do that was as a replacement for somebody who had an injury that was bleeding. Right on cue, centre Dan Hipkiss, a non-kicker who had survived the previous 100 minutes unscathed, was judged to have a blood injury.

In the quarter-final against Leinster three weeks previously, Harlequins ' late replacement Tom Williams had left the field with a wink to the television cameras and some dubious red liquid gushing from his mouth just in time to get Nick Evans back on to the field for a potentially match-winning drop goal attempt.

The letter of the law was not breached on either occasion. The spirit was.

That, given that it may be another quarter of a century till the next penalty shoot-out, should be of much more concern to the game.