Rowntree: Munster owed the fans a big win

Munster head coach Graham Rowntree says his side owed the Munster fans a performance after they kicked their season into life this evening.

The province produced their best 80 minutes of the campaign to see off the Bulls 31-17 at Thomond Park, scoring four tries in a bonus-point display.

Having lost three of their opening four games, and their only win being a drab 21-5 victory against Zebre, Munster looked far sharper in attack against last year's finalists, with the first clear pictures of their attacking game taking shape.

"I'm delighted, delighted with the result, and pretty much most of the performance," Rowntree said.

"I said to the lads, 'you can see what we're doing coming through, look how good we are when we keep momentum, are accurate around our breakdown, when we're disciplined, not giving up access to our 22. Look what we can do'."

Munster looked to be cruising to victory after Tadhg Beirne's bonus-point try put them 31-10 ahead just after the hour mark, but after conceding a sloppy try shortly after they had to withstand a lot of Bulls pressure in the final quarter to guarantee the win.

And while their attack impressed for the bulk of the game, the head coach said he was most pleased with the attitude, which saw them deny the South Africans a losing bonus-point.

"There's elements of our attack coming through, what Mike [Prendergast] has been doing. He's been doing some fantastic work, but more importantly I enjoyed our goalline defence at the end. Being a forwards coach, I thought the way we kept them out was admirable.

"They [the Bulls] are very good, they have a meticulous amount of tap-penalties, little clever tap-penalty moves near to the opposition goalline, and we stopped them. That element pleased me."

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