Carbery converts all six tries as Munster power past Scarlets
Clinical Munster ensured Scarlets’ poor run against Irish provinces continued as they suffered a ninth consecutive defeat in going down 42-7 in Llanelli.
Scarlets have not won against Irish opposition since beating Connacht 41-36 in March 2021 and they never looked like breaking that unenviable record as Munster ran out convincing bonus-point winners.
Number eight Gavin Coombes scored two tries for Munster with Jack O’Sullivan, Thomas Ahern, Shay McCarthy and Sean O’Brien also going over and Joey Carbery converted all six.
Joe Roberts scored Scarlets’ try which Charlie Titcombe converted.
Dan Jones led out Scarlets on his 150th appearance for the club and his first since tearing a hamstring back in September.
His side had the better of the early exchanges but Munster were first on the scoreboard when Coombes drove over from close range.
The hosts continued to struggle in the scrum by conceding a number of penalties and this gave Munster easy attacking platforms.
The Welsh region were then placed under considerable pressure and eventually their heroic defence caved in when Coombes powered across for his second.
Carbery again converted to give his side a deserved 14-0 interval lead.
Seven minutes after the interval, Scarlets changed their half-backs in an attempt to revive their fortunes and it paid immediate dividends when from a line-out on half-way, Roberts powered through a gap in midfield for an excellent individual try.
For the first time in the game, Scarlets briefly threatened an upset but their opponents soon upped their game. First Mike Haley was forced into touch by a cover tackle from Ioan Nicholas before Conor Murray dummied his way over from a five-metre scrum only to be denied by the TMO for an earlier obstruction.
However, the visitors were not to be denied with replacement O’Sullivan crashing over for his side’s third to put daylight between the teams.
Any hopes of a Scarlets comeback were soon extinguished when Ahern scored their bonus-point try before late tries from O’Brien and McCarthy emphasised their superiority.
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After a fairly simple Pac4, the BFs will find out a lot about themselves in September when they face the rampaging RedRoses at Twickenham in front of a record crowd. After that they will face them again in Canada in WXV1. They also have France to contend with. Will be interesting to see what Australia have to offer with Jo Yapp at the helm.
Go to commentsSuper Rugby Pacific has been better as a spectacle due to the emphasis on speeding the game up and I’d look at taking things a step further. Instead of giving teams 90 seconds to take a conversion, let’s bring that down 60 seconds. You could also look at allowing 45 seconds for a penalty goal. Maybe teams could get 20 seconds instead of 30 to form a scrum before the ref then starts the engagement process. However, this year the most pleasing change is the added competitiveness in the Trans Tasman matches. What does frustrate me is how the rugby media in Australasia allow the the whole ‘‘rugby is boring’’/’’rugby yawnion’’ narrative to take hold from from vindictive league types, the chairman of the ARL commission and News Limited Australia. Stick up for the game and shift the narrative!
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