Munster head coach Clayton McMillan insists his side still have a lot to improve on after they got their Investec Champions Cup Pool 2 campaign up and running with a bonus-point 31-3 win against Gloucester at SuperValu Páirc Uí Chaoimh.
The province scored five tries against the Premiership side, but it was far from a comfortable night in the office, needing three scores in the final 13 minutes to kill off a dogged defensive performance from their visitors.
Gloucester head coach George Skivington had brought a second-string side over from Kingsholm, making a full 15 changes from last week's win against Castres, and with a quarter of the game left to play and his side trailing just 12-3, they were still in with an outside shout of producing a shock.
As plucky as the visitors' defence was, it had been a wasteful Munster attack to that point, with their game littered with errors, and head coach McMillan (below) believes his side were guilty of forcing the issue.
"We’re happy to get ourselves on the scoreboard in terms of the European Cup stuff, but I think we'll probably wake up in the morning or even now, and know that we could have been a lot better," he said.
"I think my overriding sense would be that sometimes your will to do something so well becomes the reason it doesn't [happen].
"There's a lot of care in the team and there's a lot of willingness to want to step up and do something well for the team, but I just feel like we forced a lot today instead of just letting the game come to us.
"The only way you can make yourself feel better is to come out and put in a performance that you can be proud of. And there were lots of things that actually went well today.
"When we did get it right, when our skill execution was here, when our patience was here, we looked good. We’ve just got to build more of those moments.
"I think we're probably in the habit of stacking a couple of negatives before we get a positive, and we need it to be the other way around."
One area where Munster did excel was from their bench, with the province’s replacements eventually killing off the Gloucester challenge late on.
Replacements Ruadhán Quinn and Tom Farrell scored tries, while Conor Bartley made a short but impressive impact.
The tighthead prop (below) replaced Michael Ala’alatoa with 10 minutes to play, and forced two powerful scrum penalties in just his second appearance for the province.
The 30-year-old, who has enjoyed a long All-Ireland career with Young Munster, was initially brought in during an injury crisis last season but never played.
He made his debut in the opening game of the season against Scarlets in September, before injury knocked his progress, but McMillan appears to be a real fan.
"They all had their moments, but I was particularly happy for Conor Bartley," he added.
"He's pretty unheralded, he's a guy who has been away for 30-odd years of club rugby, never thought he'd put on a Munster jersey until he did in round one.
"He's been sitting out for the last seven or eight weeks and then went out and had a couple of really big impacts at scrum time. Super proud of him and he's going to get more opportunities.
"They [the bench] brought what we expect from them. It's a 23-man game now.
"We put just as much time into the selection of our bench as we do into the starting guys because when we get into the back end of the game, we need those guys to inject something different to what's already been out on the field and I thought they did well."
As much as Munster laboured their way through the game, a shock defeat never really seemed on the cards, with Gloucester’s lineout struggling throughout.
And looking to the positives, captain Tadhg Beirne (above) was pleased with how his side plotted their way, territorially, through the game.
"It was going to be a battle into that wind," he said of the first half.
"And credit to the lads, maybe the first five, ten minutes we weren't really there, but we kind of found our way then and managed the game pretty well and finished the first half well.
"The positive is we got the five points today and that was the target, and we got the job done.
"But as I said, we left a lot of points out there, and that's the part that would be a bit frustrating for us in terms of our conversion.
"You know, we weren't very clinical when we had the opportunity to be, and the game could have been over a lot earlier than it was. And that's what we'll be looking at to improve on.
"But we kept them scoreless other than the three points, so that's a big positive too."
