Munster reconfirm their superiority

Munster 22 Leinster 5: ON THE face of it, this looks like another fairly emphatic and even routine Munster win over Leinster, taking their aggregate winning margin over their domestic rivals to 40-5 in two league meetings this season.

And, long before the end, it felt that way too, though Leinster hardly deserved a repeat of the blank they drew at the RDS last September. They weren’t that bad, but Munster were again just too good.

It might easily have been a closer-run thing had Felipe Contepomi rewarded Leinster’s physicality up front with a more accurate return from his kicks, but he had one of those days when he couldn’t hit the proverbial barn door and instead he left 11 points behind.

Most probably, Munster would have pulled through anyway.

Leinster were clearly up for it, and to engineer seven turnovers in contact or at the breakdown in the first half, and nine overall, was quite an achievement, one which few other visiting teams – if any – will emulate hereabouts.

Ironically, no one was sturdier in defence than the typically brave Contepomi, with the likes of Malcolm O’Kelly, Leo Cullen, Rocky Elsom and Jamie Heaslip quick to sense the possibilities and counter-ruck ferociously.

Leinster also scrummaged well, yet, in most other respects, Munster were the superior force. Their lineout was better and successfully attacked the Leinster throw, especially when Bernard Jackman was forced off. They improved their close-in control after the break and then, varying their depth and never over complicating things, Munster kept their shape and played with more width through the skip-passing of Ronan O’Gara and Lifeimi Mafi or Paul Warwick hitting the line.

They also defended far better, whereas Leinster slipped off far too many first-up tackles, with Gordon D’Arcy have an unusually awry evening in the outside centre channel – where Brian O’Driscoll was particularly missed.

The absence of the Irish captain’s organisation in attack was also acutely felt. Contepomi and co complicated things regularly in attacking too narrowly, fluffed moves and sloppy passes out wide compounding the frequency with which runners – whether decoy or not – overran the ball. There must have been at least 10 of these needless turnovers.

Most significantly of all, O’Gara kept the scoreboard ticking over with three penalties and a sumptuous drop goal on the run in the 55th minute which ruthlessly turned the screw and confirmed his head was in a far better place than his counterpart’s.

Arguably there was no more defining moment in the match than the one in the third minute when Contepomi addressed a relatively straight-ish 40-metre penalty. You sensed it there and then. The league’s leading scorer with 150 points, and over 200 to his name this season for Leinster, had been in particularly prolific form of late with 81 points in his last half-dozen outings.

Yet, with so much personal history from this fixture and responsibility for his team, the sight of the men in red brings out the extremes of good and bad in Contepomi. It was reasonably well struck, but drifted slightly wide, and one can only guess the mental messages it sent to opponents, team-mates, crowd and, not least, himself.

Leinster continued to take the game to Munster with a big break by Cian Healy and rumble by Girvan Dempsey after a wondrous offload by Contepomi to Chris Whitaker. But they were unlucky that Monsieur Berdos – who is at least more bilingual than most of his English-speaking counterparts – deduced that their advantage for a penalty in front of the posts was used up before a harsh call against Leo Cullen for not releasing.

On another night, they’d have been 6-0 up a this point.

Soon though, Munster began looking for the gaps, and found them, Keith Earls and Paul Warwick beating D’Arcy in the build-up to two unerring penalties by Ronan O’Gara for a 6-0 half-time lead, and but for clever covering and blocking by Whitaker to prevent two tries, Munster might have put daylight on the illuminated scoreboard sooner.

As it was, O’Gara stretched the lead to 12-0 either side of Contepomi’s second miss (an ill-advised decision to go for the posts from the touchline) before the Puma horribly hooked his third attempt after being encouraged to go for goal – by the home crowd.

Cometh the hour, cometh the kid with it all. Warwick, utterly assured again, fielded a Johnny Sexton clearance and countered. With Tomás O’Leary having to do the clearing-out, Doug Howlett stepped in at scrum-half and Mafi took O’Gara’s pass to fix the defence and fling a miss-pass out to Wallace. He and Ronan combined superbly, each running straight and hard before the flanker offloaded off the deck to feed Earls.

By rights he had no right to do what he did, but Earls handed off Cian Healy and then beat Whitaker and Rob Kearney in turn on the outside for a superb try.

At last, Leinster began to put some shape and width on their game. Stan Wright carried twice off a close-range lineout before Shane Horgan looped around Isa Nacewa (Kearney subtly blocking Earls) to take the Fijian’s deftly disguised pass and feed D’Arcy, who held his depth and line to score.

Unsurprisingly though, Munster insisted on having the final say. Alan Quinlan made the steal from which Denis Fogarty fed O’Gara, who skip-passed to Barry Murphy on the same touchline that Earls had prowled 10 minutes earlier. Murphy stood up Horgan and beat him on the outside before putting Fogarty over with a delayed inside pass to draw Kearney.

Scoring sequence: 22 mins O’Gara pen 3-0; 28 mins O’Gara pen 6-0 (half-time 6-0); 45 mins O’Gara pen 9-0; 55 mins O’Gara drop goal 12-0; 61 mins Earls try 17-0; 68 mins D’Arcy try 17-5; 73 mins Fogarty try 22-5.

MUNSTER: P Warwick; D Howlett, K Earls, L Mafi, I Dowling; R O’Gara, T O’Leary; M Horan, J Flannery, J Hayes; D O’Callaghan, P O’Connell capt; A Quinlan, N Ronan, D Wallace. Replacements: D Ryan for Ronan, P Stringer for O’Leary, B Murphy for Dowling (all 66 mins), T Buckley for Hayes (67-70 mins), M O’Driscoll for O’Callaghan (70 mins), D Fogarty for Flannery (72 mins), D Hurley for O’Gara (75 mins). Sinbinned – Mafi (71 mins).

LEINSTER: G Dempsey; I Nacewa, G D’Arcy, S Horgan, R Kearney; F Contepomi, C Whitaker; C Healy, B Jackman, S Wright, L Cullen (capt), M O’Kelly, R Elsom, S Jennings, J Heaslip. Replacements: J Fogarty for Jackman (25 mins), J Sexton for Dempsey (50 mins), R McCormack for Healy, T Hogan for O’Kelly (both 66 mins), S O’Brien for Jennings (67 mins), S Keogh for Sexton (67-70 mins) and for Horgan (77 mins). Not used: C Jowitt

Referee: Christophe Berdos (FFR).