Ulster coach Dan McFarland was left with food for thought after Munster inflicted a 22-16 defeat on his charges in their scrappy Guinness Pro14 encounter at Thomond Park.
Both sides committed elementary errors in a match that won't live long in the memory, but Johann van Graan will be the happier coach after his side responded well to Ulster's early second-half comeback.
Tries from CJ Stander and man of the match Rory Scannell helped Munster to carve out a 15-6 interval lead with Ulster's talisman John Cooney kicking their six points from the tee.
The visitors, who haven’t won in Limerick since 2014, nosed ahead in the 49th minute after captain Rob Herring crossed the whitewash off a lineout maul.
But Andrew Conway got Munster back on track with a brilliant individual try in the 64th minute, scorching clear from inside his own half as Munster went on to top Conference B by five points after six games.
"Fair play to Munster, when they played well today they were good and they’re really difficult to stop when they’re on a roll," McFarland told RTÉ Sport.
"It was a good test for us.
"For chunks of it I thought that physically we were in the contest. We did really well on the tackle line and also the carry line.
"The things that were disappointing were basically around our holding on to the ball in contact. We turned over a number of balls through errors.
"If you come down here and give Munster opportunities, they’re going to make you pay.
"The way our set-pieces worked today, if we’d held on to the ball I think we would have given ourselves a very good chance of winning, but it wasn’t to be."
Reflecting on a much improved Ulster display at the start of the second half, McFarland said: "We drifted at the end of the first half and began losing contacts. We spoke about that and we believed in our strategy and the tactics we had. If we were able to hang on to the ball properly and move it, we were going to cause Munster problems.
"Second half, we wanted them to come out and win that gain line again, whether that was defence or attack, and that was the case at the start of the second half.
"We'd have probably have scored a couple of more tries if we’d managed to hold on to the blooming ball, but we didn’t and that’s the end of it."
The focus will now shift to the Heineken Champions Cup, with Ulster due to face Bath next Saturday.
