Fired-up Leinster find form

Put simply, Leinster's need was the greater, and it showed. Far hungrier, benefiting from three changes and with practically everyone lifting their level of performance from a week ago, they took last night's Guinness Interprovincial to Munster from the off and left them playing catch-up.

It took Munster far too long to get wound up, and when they did, they got too wound up.

By at least limiting the margin of defeat to under eight points, Munster picked up a bonus point to stay above Leinster in the table, but Leinster will take far, far more from this game and rightly so.

"Nothing concentrates the mind like impending doom," said Leinster manager Jim Glennon. Defeat would have left them eight or nine points adrift of Munster. They played with some flair as well. Martin Ridge stiffened up the midfield, the talented Shane Horgan (replaced at the interval with suspected knee ligament damage) and Kevin Nowlan ran freely and positively from the off to give their wings some space, and the polished Girvan Dempsey was again very impressive. Up front the improvement was just as marked; the tight five's pressure in the scrums partly contributing to a vastly improved back-row effort.

Trevor Brennan deserves immense credit for managing to play in an aggressive but controlled way. Sure, there were a couple of spills from the big man, but his vocal presence and stature grew as the match tightened in the second-half, and two key takes from Munster restarts, a host of line-out ball and close-in tackling augmented the mightily-effective and tighter work of Victor Costello.

But it was the performance of Craig Brownlie which was the real revelation. The 26-year-old New Zealander, Clontarf's main man, only came in on the day of the match as a replacement for clubmate Pat Ward, effectively making him a third choice debutant open side flanker playing out of his customary position at number eight. He was outstanding, giving the back row and the team some real impetus and drive from broken play.

Munster's performance was the real surprise. They threatened to steal it from Leinster late on for the third year running but this time they wouldn't have deserved it. Their players who toured South Africa aren't yet at the pace - perhaps significantly the non-touring Eddie Halvey was almost a one-man show in the first-half - and a second-half triple substitution just as they were getting their dander up only seemed to destabilise them.

Given first use of the wind by Leinster, Munster struggled to use it; Killian Keane untypically missing a couple of penalties to touch. Though the wind held up Alan McGowan's first penalty from no more than 25 metres, whereas Keane safely landed his, the force was with Leinster Sure enough, they duly scored the first of four fine tries which punctuated a fairly good and positive game. The referee, however, declined to let the game flow and was far too fastidious: tap penalties had to be on a mark seemingly the size of a five pence.

From one of innumerable scrums, Leinster popped ball to the open side for John McWeeney. From the recycled ball along the line, Horgan threw a beauty long and in front of Dempsey who skirted into the corner from 30 metres. After trailing 10-6 when turning around into the wind, only once, briefly, did Munster raise the tempo above Leinster. From a Halvey take within five minutes of the restart, Mike Lynch cut through the middle and found Brian Walsh on his shoulder, taking the return pass in the tackle for Keane to time his try-scoring pass perfectly to Anthony Horgan.

McGowan regained Leinster's lead after Keane was wrongly adjudged offside off a Munster knock forward when in fact Dempsey has brilliantly palmed McGowan's up-and-under back one-handed. Nontheless, Munster's triple substitution seemed too pre-ordained and premature.

It wasn't that the newcomers played badly, each did things well and Des Clohessy beefed up the scrum. It was just that they seemed looser, more ragged, more desperate and certainly too fired up, conceding three penalties in as many minutes.

Let off the hook a little, Leinster struck again. The pack rumbled off a Brennan line-out take, Costello taking the ball on some more before a brilliant right to left skip transfer by McGowan put the flying Brian Carey into space and Kevin Nowlan was on his shoulder for a first-rate try.

Another Brennan take, another Leinster drive and another McGowan penalty inched them further ahead. Back came Munster, Peter Clohessy the fulcrum of a maul from Halvey's take before Walsh put John Lacey into space and was in support to pick up and score in the corner.

But momentary confusion between Keane and Lynch, and a relieving Leinster penalty for "crossing" did for a promising pitch-length Munster drive and with Munster losing their cool, McGowan had the final say with another penalty. Leinster were full value for it.

Scoring Sequence: 15 mins: Keane pen, 3-0; 26: Dempsey try, McGowan con, 3-7; 34: Keane pen, 6-7; 36: McGowan pen, 6-10; 45: Horgan try, 11-10; 52: McGowan pen, 11-13; 57: Nowlan try, 11-18; 65: McGowan pen, 11-21; 70: Walsh try, Keane con, 18-21; 82: McGowan pen, 18-24.

Munster: D Crotty; J Lacey, B Walsh, M Lynch, A Horgan; K Keane, B O'Meara; I Murray, M McDermott, P Clohessy, M Galwey (capt), S Leahy, U O'Callaghan, A Foley, E Halvey. Replacements: T Tierney for O'Meara, F Sheahan for McDermott and D Clohessy for Murray (all 53 minutes), D Wallace for O'Callaghan (64 mins).

Leinster: K Nowlan; J McWeeney, S Horgan, M Ridge, G Dempsey; A McGowan, D O'Mahony; E Byrne, S Byrne, A McKeen, P Holden, G Fulcher (capt), T Brennan, V Costello, C Brownlie. Replacements: B Carey for Horgan (half-time), H Hurley for E Byrne (71 mins).

Referee: Alan Watson (Ulster).