Munster completed their first League double over Leinster since 2009 with a victory over the reigning champions that was every bit as handsome as the 28-13 scoreline indicates, and no doubt every bit as satisfying. Indeed, Munster coach Anthony Foley hailed it as possibly their most complete performance of the season.

That such a convincing, commanding and unrelenting 80-minute performance came without their three totems, Paul O’Connell, Peter O’Mahony and Conor Murray, who watched the game from the stands with world light middleweight champion Andy Lee, would have made it all the more pleasing for Foley and co.

“Yeah, and it’s good for them to watch it as well and see what it looks like,” said Foley in reference to that trio. “They obviously have done it in the past and are the main flagbearers for Munster and it’s great confidence for them to see the boys who are stepping in and doing it. It gives them a boost as well.”

Successive defeats

On the back of three successive defeats, with a truckload of injuries and most of their frontline internationals rested, what particularly pleased Foley was the manner of his team’s performance. Rather than “go into their shell,” said Foley, “it seemed to go the opposite for the boys.

“They came out and went after the game from minute one. Obviously everything is disrupted around Christmas, so we’ll be looking for Santa to come the day before every game. The disruption didn’t faze them at all. They went out about their job and got on with the game, and played with a good tempo and a good physicality.”

Although the revised scheduling and the three-day Irish camp at the start of the week meant neither side was near full strength, the game was a 25,600 sell-out – even if there were many empty seats.

“They got a game was worthy of the occasion,” said Foley. “We don’t write up the guys who are on the way up. We have a lot of good guys there today playing who are fighting for positions with in Munster and also trying to throw their hat in the ring for Ireland.

“There wasn’t a lack of quality. I thought both sides had a lot of quality, and that there was a lot of good up-and-coming players playing. It was an excellent contest from both sides, and I think if I paid money to go in and watch I’d be happy enough going home.

Matt O’Connor was not so inclined to agree, least of all when addressing his own team’s performance.

Despite only trailing 8-6 after half an hour, the Leinster coach was particularly rueful of the way his players had been repeatedly beaten to high balls in the air by a seemingly hungrier home side.

“I thought we prepared very well even given the circumstances of the week. I thought we were in a pretty good head space coming into the game. We let ourselves down in that first 20 minutes and away from home, especially at a place like this, you can’t afford to get it wrong the way we did in the first 20 minutes.

“That was the most disappointing thing and we didn’t strangle the game back and Munster just got better and better. The inaccuracies and the errors took the impetus away from us and grew Munster’s belief, which was probably the difference in the end.”

Yet, while they were still only two points adrift and asking questions themselves in an absorbing first halfl; not long past the hour mark they were 28-6 adrift and the same was up.

“We just didn’t exert any pressure,” said O’Connor of that decisive middle period of the game. “We didn’t have any field position. We didn’t build any phases and they did incredibly well with the ball they had.

Coped well

“The effort was fantastic. We had to make a lot of tackles and in the second half, down a man, I thought we coped pretty well in that period, but it was going to be hard, at 28-6, to come back into it, especially once Darragh [Fanning] got the yellow card,” said O’Connor in reference to

Nigel Owens

“harsh” binning of the Leinster winger in the 54th minute.

Dominic Ryan

will observe the return to play protocols after his game was cut short due to concussion, while Munster’s only real injury is Robin Copeland, whose arm was in a sling after suffering a shoulder injury.

So Munster move on to Galway next week to play Connacht, and it is testimony to the heightened threat from the west that Munster will arrive there fully locked and loaded, with the aforementioned trio restored and with Foley, for all his satisfaction, demanding that this level of performance be achieved more regularly.

“The one thing I’ll hit them with is that we want a consistent performance like that. You want it over a period of time.”