Reds get off mark but fail to land bonus point
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 last half-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.
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 score ruled out, for ‘clear separation’ 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.
In the second half, 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.
MUNSTER: M Haley; C Philips, M Fekitoa, D Goggin (R Scannell 59), P Campbell; B Healy (J Carbery 49), C Casey (C Murray 49); D Kilcoyne (J Loughman 49), N Scannell (S Buckley 49), K Knox (S Archer 46); F Wycherley (E Edogbo 59), T Beirne; J O’Donoghue, P O’Mahony (capt), J O’Sullivan (R Quinn 73). Scorers - Tries: N Scannell (2), Knox. Cons: Healy (3).
ZEBRE: R Kriel; P Bruno, E Cronje (F Smith 13), E Lucchin (capt) (L Pani 32), J Trulla; T Eden, A Fusco; J Pitinari, G Ribaldi (L Bigi 41), I Neculai; G Vendetti, L Krumov; D Ruggeri, MJ Pelser (I Bianchi 41), T Fox-Matamua (J Furno 59). Scorers - Try: Pani. Yellow card: Vendetti.
Referee: AJ Jacobs (South Africa).