Munster were full value for this 28-13 derby victory at Thomond Park as they completed their first GUINNESS PRO12 season’s double over Leinster since 2009.
Defeated in their last three outings, Anthony Foley’s men built an 11-6 interval lead in Limerick with man-of-the-match CJ Stander crossing for a 16th minute try.
Andrew Conway came back to haunt his former team with a well-taken try in the 44th minute and during Darragh Fanning’s sin-bin period, Munster replacement Dave O’Callaghan collected try number three and Ian Keatley capped off his 13-point kicking haul.
Stand-in captain Shane Jennings responded with Leinster’s lone try, linking well with fellow back rower Jack Conan, but they could not avoid their first league defeat since Munster visited them in early October.
Keatley and Ian Madigan swapped early penalties, Munster forcing a maul infringement initially and then their loosehead John Ryan was pinged for not rolling away quickly enough.
Faced with bunched midfields, both kickers cleverly exploited the space in behind before the Munster pack got on the front foot with some muscular carries.
Leinster had to replace Dominic Ryan and as they adjusted, the hosts struck for the game’s opening try. Stander (pictured below), who temporarily lost his jersey, raced onto a Duncan Williams pass to make the line despite the presence of Luke Fitzgerald and Dave Kearney.
Keatley missed the conversion but soon threatened on an arcing run over halfway, Leinster scrambling back and then responding with a strong scrum on the hosts’ 22.
Keatley was caught offside, allowing Madigan to close the gap to two points – it was only briefly though, as Ryan’s replacement Jordi Murphy coughed up a penalty which Keatley turned into three points.
Madigan curled his next penalty effort wide and Leinster fell further behind in the opening minutes of the second period, Keatley’s flat pass seeing Conway (pictured below) crash through three tacklers and he had Isaac Boss hanging off him when he touched down.
The left-sided conversion was added by Keatley to open up an 18-6 advantage and despite plenty of endeavour from Fitzgerald and Zane Kirchner, Leinster were getting little change from a resolute Munster defence.
Winger Fanning earned his yellow card for pinching a ruck ball that referee Nigel Owens deemed was not out, and that allowed Munster to dictate play approaching the hour mark.
Keatley landed the first of two penalty attempts and Foley’s charges then hurt Leinster up front again, picking and carrying at close quarters until Dave O’Callaghan evaded the grasp of both Jennings and Kane Douglas to score with 62 minutes gone.
After Keatley’s conversion, Leinster managed to hit back within seven minutes. A prolonged spell of pressure ended with Conan holding off JJ Hanrahan and getting his offload away for Jennings (pictured below) to dot down to the left of the posts.
Madigan added the extras and although both packs had sniffs of the try-line late on, impressive Munster had done enough to warrant their 15-point winning margin.
Giving his reaction afterwards, Munster head coach Foley said: “You get what you deserve. We built a lead and we managed to hold onto it. It’d be greedy to talk about a fourth try, but we were a referee decision away from getting one.
“There are aspects of the game that we’ll take away and bring to Connacht (next week). There are no guarantees and there’s definitely something to build on from here, and it’s also nice to put an end to a run of losses.
“We used it (possession) a small bit better than Leinster. We competed and if any ball broke, we won it.We didn’t have a whole pile of set pieces to play off in the first half, but our unstructured game was quite good.
“We got good numbers around the ball, we got good carries and we remained patient in their half of the pitch.”
Leinster boss Matt O’Connor admitted: “We gave them opportunities at the other end of the field and that’s where Munster are very good. They took their chances and once they were in front on the scoreboard, it made it very hard.
“They kicked the ball, they chased very hard, they won those 50-50s and from there, they got momentum. From that position, they were very difficult to stop. We defended for a lot of the game and Munster were very good at looking after the ball.”
He added: “I thought the ball was out (for Darragh Fanning’s sin-binning), to be honest. But that’s the referee’s prerogative obviously. It’s one of those calls that potentially doesn’t go your way away from home and when you’re on the back foot, but we were second best up until then.”
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