Rob still waiting for Penney to drop

Leinster 30 Munster 21

A defeat to old rivals Leinster is never palatable to southern tastes but with the RaboDirect Pro12 deferring to a new Heineken Cup campaign this weekend and an extremely difficult challenge awaiting in Paris in the form of Racing Metro, one can imagine Penney would have hoped for a more consistent performance than his side delivered in Dublin. Certainly, Munster supporters among the 46,280 crowd will have wanted more tangible signs of the progress made under the new management.

Once again there were encouraging glimpses of the shape, or shapes, Penney’s team are striving to embrace, not least in the variety of play that produced two tries, one delightfully expansive one at the start of the game when Peter O’Mahony finished off a superb move; the other an old-school dive off the base of a ruck in the 67th minute from scrum-half Conor Murray that set up a rousing finale.