'The belief only grew': Johaan van Graan knew win over Leinster was just around the corner

Conor Murray in possession during the Guinness PRO14 Rainbow Cup match between Leinster and Munster. Picture: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile

Never mind the strength of the opposition, it had been seven years since Munster players were able to travel back down the M7 after a win over Leinster and the men in red were entitled to enjoy the journey.

After six straight losses, including last month’s Guinness PRO14 final, to their nearest, dearest, and fiercest rivals and the most recent still very raw, Leinster’s heaviest defeat for three years had been inflicted and it mattered not which players they had selected to face Johann van Graan’s men nor that the PRO14 Rainbow Cup competition they were starting out in remains very much a work in progress.

Two tries from Conor Murray laid the foundation. The first came off a blistering counter-attack starting from a Peter O’Mahony strip from scrum-half Hugh O’Sullivan and made by a storming break from man of the match Damian de Allende. The second from close range again followed a midfield barrage from the Springbok centre in tandem with midfield partner Chris Farrell, linked by a great offload from back-rower Gavin Coombes, which got Munster to the line from where the scrum-half pounced.

A general view of the action. Picture: Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile

It helped propel Munster into a 20-3 lead. They survived a yellow card for Stephen Archer after the prop had trampled over James Ryan at a ruck, before a driving maul led to a penalty try to secure the win. A month on from that oh-so-poor performance at the RDS as Leinster rumbled to a fourth consecutive PRO14 final having knocked Munster out of the competition at the semi-final stage in the previous three seasons, it was as different as day and night.

It was not so much a team Munster were challenging themselves against on Saturday night as a demon to be exorcised. Getting the job done in a manner as one-sided as the defeat that was handed to them four weeks earlier on the same pitch meant more than just an ideal start in this Rainbow Cup, though van Graan insisted there had been no psychological baggage to unpack in the fixture.

“We didn’t spend a lot of time on the six defeats in a row,” the Munster head coach said. “We looked at what could we do better and I felt it was a very good performance.

“We haven’t won here as a club for a long time so this was an important game for us.

The belief has never changed, in fact the belief only grew after the final and you know, we came close a few times and I’ll take a three tries to zero win in the RDS any day of the week.

So he should. Leinster have inflicted nothing but misery on their southern rivals since van Graan arrived to succeed Rassie Erasmus in November 2017, not least in three consecutive PRO14 semi-finals and last month’s final.

This one-sided rivalry, however, has not just been a Van Graan issue, though the South African came into the game with just one victory over Leo Cullen in 10 attempts. This was only the sixth Munster win over Leinster in a decade since their 2011 Magners League final success delivered the most recent trophy and Munster’s lack of silverware is directly correlated to Leinster’s rise as a European heavyweight.

Perhaps it was just as well for the visitors that blue eyes seemed firmly focused on more important matters ahead on the continent, next Sunday’s Heineken Champions Cup semi-final at La Rochelle. Cullen’s selection certainly emphasised that and when the Leinster head coach lost the returning Caelan Doris to a calf issue on the eve of the game he was further stripped of first-choice strength.

Damian de Allende of Munster is applauded off the pitch by the Leinster team. Picture: Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile

Still, Leinster’s second and third-choice players have proven they can maintain the standards set by their Test-level team-mates but they were down to a fourth-choice half-back combination when Harry Byrne left the field with a hamstring injury after six minutes, pairing starting nine O’Sullivan with replacement fly-half David Hawkshaw.

That Byrne had been injured trying unsuccessfully to stop Murray for the opening try only emphasised the sense that Munster’s almost full complement would have too much for the PRO14 champions, of whom only three starters had helped their province to victory in last month’s final against the same opposition.

Munster now have 11 days to prepare for round two and the visit of Ulster to Thomond Park a week on Friday. Their own European involvement ended a week after the PRO14 final after going toe-to-toe with Toulouse at Thomond Park in the Round of 16 and though a Rainbow Cup success would not carry the same heft as a league or Champions Cup title, they are still in it to win it.

“We kind of took stock after the Toulouse and the Leinster defeats and saw this as the start of a new season because it’s a totally new competition for us,” van Graan said. “We worked on quite a few parts of our game over the last two weeks and we had some good moments out there today.

Defensively I thought the breakdown was a real battle and one of the more pleasing things is we managed a lot more territory in this game, you know, we had quite a few set-pieces in their 22.

“I guess the work-on is the one or two chances that we left out there, it would have been nice to get the fourth try there right at the end but a lot to work on and who knows what the rest of Rainbow Cup holds but what we currently know is there’s two more interpros coming against Ulster and Connacht and we’ll look forward to that.

"But we’ll enjoy this win and then we’ll move on again on Monday.”