Dave Kilcoyne says win will build self-belief in the squad

There was a spell there when the old enmities inherent to the Munster-Leinster rivalry appeared to be buried beneath the bonhomie borne of Irish duties and Leinster’s dominance, so Saturday night was a return to the most bitter and biting of the good old days.

Why so? It’s impossible to say.

The likelihood is that there was a myriad of reasons for all that fire and brimstone and maybe the fast-approaching World Cup in Japan was among them. Twenty-nine internationals played a part on Saturday evening in Limerick, all but three of them being Irish.

If the first meeting in red and blue of Joey Carbery and Jonathan Sexton assumed the greatest significance in most eyes then there were localised turf wars to be disputed all over the pitch, not least in the front row.

Leinster pitched up with both of Joe Schmidt’s first-choice props, Cian Healy and Tadhg Furlong, on duty. Facing them were two of their national understudies in Dave Kilcoyne and John Ryan but the former shooed away suggestions that RWC19 had any bearing on this one.

“You lose your World Cup place when you start thinking like that. You take it week by week here. There’s so much rugby to be played between now and then. You look at how Connacht played (Friday) night, I thought they had an excellent forward performance. Even the replacements when they came on, they’re showing real strength in depth, so we have a massive challenge this week (away to Connacht on Saturday).

“It means that the World Cup isn’t really a chat down here.”

That conversation will build inexorably once Auld Lang Syne is sung tonight.

The reality is that this game will have done the candidacy of Munster’s contenders no harm at all given they managed to hold off the considerable advances of a Leinster side that, like themselves, was close to full strength. As for Munster as a whole, both Johann van Graan and Kilcoyne touched on the worth it will have for the province going forward.

“It builds belief in the squad but at the same time, as Johann also mentioned, we didn’t take chances there,” said Kilcoyne. “We had lads coming back, Joey and Murray’s first game together (in Thomond Park), Dan’s first game back in a long time.

“And what a performance that was for him to come back from being out for so long and put in a shift like that.”

Leo Cullen made mention of the valuable minutes and experience banked by some of the younger Leinster players off the bench – Ciarán Frawley, Hugh O’Sullivan and Conor O’Brien – but no young gun smoked so much as Fineen Wycherley did for the home side.

Van Graan was effusive in his praise for the 21-year old from Bantry. Nominally a lock, he was given a run at blindside against the Cheetahs earlier this season and the head coach trusted his abilities in that role two days ago in the absence of the rested Peter O’Mahony.

Wycherley backed up his impressive recent form with another superb 80-minute performance against the PRO14 and European champions – not bad for a man who was still in the academy when the South African gaffer arrived late last year.

“Fineen came in at pre-season and you’ve got to earn your stripes to be in that Munster pack,” said Kilcoyne. “That’s always been the way, when we were back through the days of Paul O’Connell, Donners, all them. To get on that Munster pack you’ve got to win over the players and Fineen from day one just came in and put his head down, worked hard and he’s Munster through and through. I was delighted for him, he’s really playing excellent rugby.”