Munster 'probably lucky' to leave Sportsground with a win, Peter O'Mahony admits

Peter O'Mahony of Munster, right, celebrates with team-mate Damian de Allende after their win over Connacht. Picture: Sam Barnes/Sportsfile

Peter O’Mahony admitted his Munster side were lucky to escape the Sportsground with a victory on Saturday night.

It means Munster have now won eight out of their nine Guinness PRO14 games this season, the one loss coming in Belfast seven days earlier when a below-strength side was beaten 15-10 by Ulster. The 16-10 win over Conference B rivals Connacht extended Munster’s lead at the top of the table to 11 points with a maximum of five rounds still to play unless the Covid-19 pandemic intervenes and only one qualifying spot to go straight into the final.

Yet Munster’s ill-discipline meant they finished the game with only 13 men and having led 16-3 with only two minutes to go they needed a last-ditch turnover on their line to prevent a Connacht home win that would have blown the conference wide open.

Captain O’Mahony, one of 14 Munster players getting their first taste of action since their own epic comeback to beat Clermont in France on December 19, saw his side outmuscle their interprovincial rivals for those first 78 minutes as they opened up a 13-point cushion through a first-half Chris Farrell try and 11 points from the boot of JJ Hanrahan.

Yet a rising penalty count led to yellow cards for replacement backs Rory Scannell on 77 minutes, quickly followed by a Peter Sullivan try for Connacht, converted brilliantly by Jack Carty, and Nick McCarthy on 82 minutes as Munster desperately defended their tryline.

With a penalty just five metres out, Connacht elected for a scrum rather than opting to stretch a 13-man defence and paid the price as Tadhg Beirne counter-ruck led to a Munster turnover to save the day for the conference leaders.

“These games are never finished until the 80-odd minutes are actually up and we were probably very lucky in the end to be honest with you,” O’Mahony said afterwards in his post-match interview on eir Sport.

“We conceded too many penalties, Connacht played some very good rugby, they put us under a huge amount of pressure and probably forced us to concede a lot of those penalties at times but indiscipline was top of the list of reasons for putting us under so much pressure and them playing some excellent rugby.

“So in the scheme of things we’re probably lucky to come out of there with the win in the end.

The skipper added: “Tonight was hugely important for us, we’re both in the one conference and we’re under no illusions that that was really important for us going forward in the PRO14.

“So it’s all well and good to be competing and the squad looking competitive and healthy but you need to be putting in the results. We didn’t get one last week, I didn’t think we played well enough.

I think we were luckier tonight but I suppose that’s a sign of a good team at times when you’re not playing your very best in these kinds of conditions and coming away from home and getting a win. That has to be a good sign.

For Connacht head coach Andy Friend it was a deeply disappointing outcome a week on from a famous victory over Leinster at the RDS that brought to an end the champions’ 26-match winning streak in the lead going back to April 2019.

Friend was frustrated by the on-field decision by his players to go for a scrum at the death.

Asked if Connacht should have won it, the head coach said: "We should have. We had a five-man scrum, 15 men against 13 men at the end of 82 minutes of football and what we did is probably the one thing you didn't want to do.

"That's very frustrating, to have worked that hard and to have had that fight right up until the death. You should take that chance but we didn't.” Friend added: "It's 80 minutes, you've got to play the whole 80 minutes. I would have said with about 20 minutes to go, 16-3, that if we got a point we would have been doing well. But from then onwards, it looked like we started to actually believe we could win the game and started to trust all the things that we said we wanted to do.

"We didn't do it for the previous 60 minutes, which was frustrating. We've got to be better than that. We weren't clinical enough in the first half, we had guys coming off the page. You can't play as individuals against Munster."