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Munster up and running after victory over Zebre Parma
By PA
Munster’s superior maul delivered their opening win of the season as they overcame Zebre Parma 21-5 in a drab United Rugby Championship encounter at Musgrave Park.
Ben Healy converted tries from Niall Scannell (2) and Keynan Knox to give Graham Rowntree’s side a 21-0 half-time lead. Zebre suffered a couple of injury blows and had lock Gabriele Venditti sin-binned.
Replacement Lorenzo Pani’s opportunist 44th-minute effort got the Italians off the mark, but a sloppy closing half an hour saw Munster miss out on the bonus point.
There was some doubt about the grounding of hooker Scannell’s eighth-minute opener, but a lengthy TMO review went Munster’s way and Healy added the conversion.
It came from a well-driven lineout maul and good initial work before that from Patrick Campbell, on a kick chase, and Tadhg Beirne at the breakdown.
Zebre captain Enrico Lucchin and Pierre Bruno provided the running threat before prop Juan Pittinari knocked on in a try-scoring position.
The visitors’ lineout also misfired badly, with Giampietro Ribaldi guilty of two crooked throws and they had nine lost lineouts before the break. Munster’s execution was much cleaner.
Prop Knox was unstoppable from a few metres out, doubling the hosts’ lead to 14 points in the 17th minute.
Jack O’Donoghue had a subsequent score ruled out, for ‘clear separation’ on this occasion, but Zebre lost Venditti to the bin for a cynical offside.
Scannell crashed over from the resulting lineout drive in the 24th minute, with the visitors having to reshuffle their back-line due to injuries picked up by centres Erich Cronje and Lucchin.
Fabio Roselli’s men sparked into life early in the second half, Jacopo Trulla’s chip kick grounded by onrushing youngster Pani with the bounce having beaten Healy.
The final 40 minutes were littered with mistakes, however, as even Ireland duo Conor Murray and Joey Carbery, who were both sprung from the bench, could not get Munster firing again.
A muddled Munster lineout summed up a game that had disintegrated as a spectacle, the biggest cheer coming when 18-year-old back-rower Ruadhan Quinn came on to become Munster’s youngest player of the professional era.
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Latest Comments
What’s new its a common occurrence, just the journos out there expecting a negative spin. The outcome will be beneficial to jordie and Leinster. The home grown lads hav got some experience to step up to and be more competitive, that or spend the 6 months keeping the bench warm.
Go to commentsI’m all for speeding up the game. But can we be certain that the slowness of the game contributed to fans walking out? I’m not so sure. Super rugby largely suffered from most fans only being able to, really, follow the games played in their own time zone. So at least a third of the fan base wasn’t engaged at any point in time. As a Saffer following SA teams in the URC - I now watch virtually every European game played on the weekend. In SR, I wouldn’t be bothered to follow the games being played on the other side of the world, at weird hours, if my team wasn’t playing. I now follow the whole tournament and not just the games in my time zone. Second, with New Zealand teams always winning. It’s like formula one. When one team dominates, people lose interest. After COVID, with SA leaving and Australia dipping in form, SR became an even greater one horse race. Thats why I think Japan’s league needs to get in the mix. The international flavor of those teams could make for a great spectacle. But surely if we believe that shaving seconds off lost time events in rugby is going to draw fans back, we should be shown some figures that supports this idea before we draw any major conclusions. Where are the stats that shows these changes have made that sort of impact? We’ve measured down to the average no. Of seconds per game. Where the measurement of the impact on the fanbase? Does a rugby “fan” who lost interest because of ball in play time suddenly have a revived interest because we’ve saved or brought back into play a matter of seconds or a few minutes each game? I doubt it. I don’t thinks it’s even a noticeable difference to be impactful. The 20 min red card idea. Agreed. Let’s give it a go. But I think it’s fairer that the player sent off is substituted and plays no further part in the game as a consequence.
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