Ian Costello: Munster's discipline has to be 'infinitely better'

Having conceded 17 penalties in their Champions Cup defeat to Castres just over a week ago, there would have been a big focus on discipline on the Munster training pitch last week.

By the eighth minute in Belfast on Friday night, Munster had already been whistled four times by referee Ben Whitehouse, and they would go on to give away another hefty penalty count – 16 in total.

The statistics from Friday's game at Kingspan Stadium make for bizarre reading. Munster made 291 tackles, just under 200 more than Ulster. They lived off 30% possession and 26% territory, lost the penalty count 16-7, while they won just two turnovers compared to eight for Ulster.

Despite all of the above, Munster won 22-19, and brought a bonus-point back to Limerick.

Before they got on the bus home, Munster’s interim head coach Ian Costello said they would let their smash-and-grab win settle before they started to pick apart why they had to go and win it that way.

But the province’s head of rugby operations admitted his side flew too close to the wind with their penalty count, something that will have to be "infinitely better" when they welcome Leinster to Thomond Park on Friday.

"We had two headline areas that we focused on [before the game] and discipline was the first," he said.

"Ulster are no different, they are so good, they have a good maul and pick-and-go game and we played completely into their hands.

"A lot of that is controllable. Ben [Whitehouse] is a very technical referee and we gave him really easy opportunities to penalise us at times.

"There’s a couple of things to that, one, if we had the ball more often we won’t get pinged, so we didn’t hold onto the ball as well as we could have so we put ourselves under a lot of pressure.

"It’s something