IT WAS CLEAR from the early stages of Munster’s Guinness Pro14 evisceration of the Ospreys that the pack had done huge work on their set-piece after it had malfunctioned so disappointingly a week previous.
O’Shea played 80 minutes against the Ospreys. Source: Inpho/Billy Stickland
While Joey Carbery truly announced himself in a Munster jersey with a confident and assured display in the 10 jersey, a performance embellished with his first try in red, the home side’s dominance up front laid the platform for an emphatic 49-13 win.
Peter O’Mahony, Rhys Marshall, Tadhg Beirne, Chris Cloete and Arno Botha all had huge games in the trenches, and three of Munster’s seven tries came from compact and powerful rolling mauls.
The returning O’Mahony orchestrated Munster’s first try in the 16th minute at Musgrave Park, prowling at the back of the maul after Darren O’Shea had gathered Marshall’s lineout and Cloete and the Kiwi hooker had continued the momentum.
The Munster captain would eventually fall over the whitewash, by which stage referee Stuart Berry was making his way under the posts for a penalty try after Ospreys second row Giorgi Nemsadze had sacked the maul in a bid to stop the inevitable. It only set the tone for the evening.
“That was one of the things we worked on all week, and we really got into each other on Tuesday [in training] and that came out in the maul,” O’Shea said afterwards.
“Our patience in the maul especially.”
With Carbery dancing his way through the Ospreys defence for a memorable maiden Munster try, Johann van Graan’s side were well on their way, before the pack further stamped their authority on the game.
Cloete’s initial burst for the line created the opening for James Cronin to get it down on the base of the post, before Munster used the rolling maul to great effect on the stroke of half-time with Marshall applying the finishing touch to seal the bonus-point.
The hooker was over again just after the break in near-identical circumstances, further reward for the work of Jerry Flannery and the pack at UL in the week leading up to the game.
“We were all hurting after the loss against Glasgow and knew we really needed to pull the finger out to perform,” O’Shea, who was a key cog in the wheel as lineout jumper, continued.
“Our work all week helped us perform.