Battle for redemption at Ravenhill

Whatever the demands in Munster for a return to winning ways after a chastening home defeat to Leinster, it is up in Ulster where the need for atonement is felt much deeper ahead of this evening’s sold-out PRO14 derby clash in Belfast, writes Simon Lewis

Munster head coach Johann van Graan will send his new charges into a second interprovincial dust-up in six days tonight fuelled not just by the bitterness of losing his 100 per cent record at the province following his arrival in mid-November but also the meekness of its surrender.

The men in red paid the price at Thomond Park on St Stephen’s night for a desperately slow start, debilitated by both a lack of intensity and accuracy in a terrible first 40 minutes which was punished by a clinical Leinster outfit rightly recognised as the cream of the Irish crop.