Munster finished their South African tour with a groundbreaking 10 points after picking up a late bonus-point try against the Lions in Johannesburg.
The Lions posed a serious threat after their victory against Leinster last week. While they are usually dominant in the scrum and elusive in the wider channels, they were tamed by Munster, who brought the game back to basics and managed their strategy expertly to return home with a spring in their step.
Munster surged towards last year's URC victory with an away win against the Stormers. They’ve teed themselves up nicely for the final three rounds after more impressive victories on the road in South Africa.
The Lions clearly changed their gameplan since last week. They kicked their exits on the pitch, meaning they were either trying to run Munster out of oxygen early in the game or they were worried about the Munster setpiece.
The latter is possibly true as, conversely, Munster were happy to kick the ball off the pitch and manage the pace while attacking the Lions setpieces.
Munster dealt with the altitude by selecting players to come off the bench with energy when the team would need it most.
Craig Casey was the earliest replacement at 44 minutes for Conor Murray. Others followed soon after, such as Gavin Coombes for Jack O'Donoghue, and Peter O'Mahony gave way to the athletic Thomas Ahern just past the 50-minute mark.
Too often the term 'finishers' is bandied about to almost protect the feelings of the bench players. However, you feel that Munster believed these were the players to finish the game and deal with the pace and pressure of the South African environment.
The basics of getting on the scoreboard early were dependent on Jack Crowley, who revelled in the altitude and stroked over multiple penalties to give Munster a 9-0 lead.
It would have been 12-0 if it weren’t for a neck roll with another penalty advantage looming.
Munster kicked contestable kicks, chased them to put the Lions threats on the ground and attacked the breakdown.
Ironically, it is a gameplan that was synonymous with Rassie Erasmus and his South African influence, transferring pressure to the other team and squeezing them into errors.
Munster competed well up front, dismantling the Lions maul, sometimes illegally, but brought them to ground and allowed the likes of Tadhg Beirne to do the rest in forcing turnovers, one on his own line in a vital stop before Munster scored a maul of their own in the most efficient manner.
It started with Beirne being a nuisance in the Lions maul, forcing a knock-on. Munster won a penalty from that scrum, taking on a Lions strength head on. A good kick to the corner was followed by a fast maul try to give Munster a 16-6 lead, with a psychological edge.
While the Lions will be frustrated by their own attacking play, you’d have to credit Munster with making it such a fight.
Their defence started at the breakdown, double efforts from defenders getting back on their feet either slowed down the attacking ball by jackling or by nudging the attacking ruckers back on to Morne van den Berg at scrum-half, disrupting his delivery to the back line.
The Lions weren't without their linebreaks. A couple of clever blocking lines from their frontline attackers stopped the efforts of Beirne and RG Snyman on two attacks in particular.
However, the South African side looked for too much with their offloading game and Munster managed to snaffle possession back a number of times, Mike Haley doing particularly well to get off the ground following a low tackle and he was able to intercept the flow of offloads.
It might seem like very basic stuff, but that’s the point. Munster’s basics of scrum, maul, dogged defence and taking their kicks at goal put them in a comfortable position.
Chasing a game in South Africa, with less oxygen and unfamiliar surroundings is a difficult thing to do. Game management and substitution management gave Munster a hugely successful away tour, returning home in third place in the URC.
They’ll travel to Edinburgh either side of two home interprovincial games against Connacht and Ulster.
Glasgow sit on top of the table but have to go to South Africa and try to replicate what Munster have done, while Leinster sit just one point ahead of Munster with the welcome distraction of fighting on two fronts, and a European semi-final looms this weekend.
Graham Rowntree and his players have positioned themselves well to surge towards home advantage in the knockout rounds. Nothing is guaranteed, but a proper defence of their URC title is under way.
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