Newport-Gwent Dragons 22 Munster 6
Anthony Foley, the Muster head coach, defended his decision to make wholesale changes against the Newport Gwent Dragons after the province suffered consecutive league defeats for the first time since May 2014.
A late try from Rynard Landman, the Dragons’ South African second row, sealed the victory for the Welsh region after outside-half Dorian Jones had put them in control with three penalties and a drop goal.
It secured only the Dragons’ second win in 10 meetings against Munster, who have lost back-to-back PRO12 games for the first time since the end of the 2013/14 campaign when they went down at home to Ulster before defeat in the play-off semi-final at Glasgow.
After the previous week’s defeat to Connacht at Thomond Park, a first in 29 years for Connacht, Foley made 10 changes to his starting line-up.
It included bringing in Rory Scannell, who made history alongside sibling Niall Scannell as the first brothers to start a league game for Munster, and although he kicked two penalties on his first start at outside half, the visitors were largely outplayed against a stubborn Dragons side.
Foley said: “You have to make changes, you can’t play the same 15 every week. We are in a lot of competitions, we have injuries and players need to be looked after.
“Players have been given their chance but they haven’t taken it.
“We butchered a couple of chances in the first half and we didn’t give ourselves anything to hold on to.
“It could have been 20-6 if we’d taken our opportunities and catching a ball or taking a pass has nothing to do with the team being confident but we couldn’t do that and it’s very frustrating.
“We want to get our heads down now and make sure we get a performance against Leicester at home in Europe to stop this rot.”
Jones kicked the home side in front with a penalty inside a minute as the Dragons got the better of Munster in the opening exchanges, before opposite number Rory Scannell brought the visitors level.
Munster’s lacklustre attack finally found some bite 20 minutes in and they crossed the Dragons’ line twice in the space of three minutes but on both occasions failed to come away with a try.
First Simon Zebo was adjudged to have used a double movement to get over the line after a 40 metre surge up field by Ronan O'Mahony, then two minutes later Gonzalez Amorosino lost the ball in a tackle as he attempted to ground the ball over the line.
The Dragons came close to a try of their own five minutes before the interval when centre Adam Hughes put full-back Carl Meyer into space out wide but he was halted by an excellent covering tackle from Zebo.
Scannell added a second penalty a minute before half-time to even the score but that lasted just three minutes after the interval as Jones struck a drop goal to edge the Dragons back into the lead.
With half an hour remaining Foley replaced Scannell with Tyler Bleyendaal, the former New Zealand under 20s captain, but his first contribution was to push a relatively straightforward penalty attempt wide of the posts.
It proved to be costly as with 15 minutes remaining Jones, who combined his career with a job as a rugby development officer at a school until earlier this year, kicked his third penalty.
With the game on a knife edge it was Landman who had the final say with a superb false pass to beat two Munster defenders out wide and crash over to secure the victory for the Dragons.
Scorers: Dragons — Try: R Landman, conversion: D Jones, penalties: D Jones (3), J Tovey, drop-goal: D Jones. Munster — Penalties: R Scannell (2).
Dragons: Carl Meyer; Tom Prydie, Adam Hughes, Adam Warren, Ashton Hewitt (Ross Wardle '79); Dorian Jones (Jason Tovey '79), Sarel Pretorius (Charlie Davies '65); Phil Price, Thomas Rhys Thomas (Rhys Buckley '65), Brok Harris (Lloyd Fairbrother '72); Matthew Screech (Cory Hill '71), Rynard Landman; Lewis Evans (Ed Jackson '51), Nic Cudd, Taulupe Faletau.
Munster: Lucas Amorosino; Ronan O'Mahony (Gerhard van den Heever '71), David Johnston, Denis Hurley, Simon Zebo; Rory Scannell (Tyler Bleyendaal '51), Tomas O'Leary (Cathal Sheridan '65); Dave Kilcoyne (James Cronin '61), Niall Scannell (Kevin O'Byrne '71), John Ryan (Mario Sagario 65); Dave Foley, Mark Chisholm (Billy Holland '65); Shane Buckley (Jordan Coghlan '61), Dave O'Callaghan, Robin Copeland.
Referee: Gary Conway (IRFU)
