Leinster out-muscle Munster at Thomond Park to maintain winning start

Too powerful, too clinical, and too much depth. Munster were no match for Leinster at Thomond Park, as the league leaders maintained their dominant start to the BKT United Rugby Championship with a 28-7 win.

Leo Cullen's side have now reached the midway stage of the regular season with a perfect nine wins from nine matches, as their defence once again squeezed out an opposition that tried in vain to find a way over and around Jacques Nienaber’s impressive front line.

Leinster spent a good chunk of this game without the ball, but were clinical with the chances they got. Luke McGrath, Sam Prendergast and Josh van der Flier crossed for tries inside the opening 50 minutes, with McGrath and Van der Flier both taking advantage of some sleepy defending by Munster at the fringe of the ruck.

Prendergast converted those three, while his try made it 14-0 to the visitors before the break, and although Munster started the second half brightly with a Tom Ahern try, Ian Costello’s side never looked like pulling off a second comeback win in a row, with Caelan Doris hammering over the line to bring up the bonus-point on 73 minutes.

While Munster did their best to front up against a loaded Leinster squad, familiar issues were at play throughout the game, with an inconsistent lineout attack and scrum killing a number of promising opportunities.

Two of those opportunities came in the opening 15 minutes, as they failed to fire in the Leinster 22.

The first of those instances was just two minutes in, when a throw to the tail went over the back, before a second great opportunity was spurned on 13 minutes, when Jack Boyle and Caelan Doris got in to spoil the maul, after Gavin Coombes had taken the clean lineout ball.

In between those two missed