Graham Rowntree believes Munster have turned a corner after they gave their season a shot in the arm with a bonus-point victory over Connacht.
Munster crossed for two tries in each half as they claimed a 24-17 win at Thomond Park to move into the top eight of the BKT United Rugby Championship.
Calvin Nash and front-row trio Roman Salanoa, John Ryan and Niall Scannell all crossed the whitewash as Munster mauled their way to victory, while also producing some lovely backline moves.
Asked when was key to Munster's victory, Rowntree replied: "We were smart with the ball. Our kicking game was smart, our maul and maul defence was good.
"Our discipline is still a work-on. We are still giving teams access to our 22. But I was pleased with the win. It wasn't perfect by any means, I said that to the lads afterwards.
"They’re a good team but compared to our performance down in Galway last month, we were a lot better."
Munster’s performance was a far cry to their display at the Sportground. They went in level at half-time despite playing into a strong wind, and then hit Connacht for two tries in seven second-half minutes to put themselves on course for their third win of the season.
"There has been a lot of development," said Rowntree. "We're still learning. We’ve had more training time with the coaches, a bit more of a settled squad.
"We had a lot of moving parts last month with unavailability. We just kept hammering at what we have been doing well in training."
John Hodnett, Peter O’Mahony and Mike Haley all picked up knocks in what was another physical derby but Rowntree was hopeful that none of them were too serious, while others could return from injury against Edinburgh on Friday.
"Keith Earls might come in, Fineen Wycherley is not far off," he said. "A couple more this week hopefully. It's a short turnaround this week, we’ve got to manage the squad appropriately in that regard."
While Rowntree feels Munster are heading in the right direction, Connacht director of rugby Andy Friend was extremely frustrated by his side’s performance.
Once again the Westerners' attack failed to spark, even with the return of Bundee Aki. Scrum dominance went unrewarded, while they also lost their discipline at key moments.
Connacht had a scrum penalty overturned late in the first half, which resulted in Salanoa drawing Munster level, while John Porch was sin-binned eight minutes after the restart for preventing Joey Carbery from chasing his chip over the top.
Friend said: "About five minutes before [the scrum penalty reversal] there’d been a bit of push-me-shove-you, and he said to both captains, 'after the whistle we can’t have people coming in’.
"He’d blown the whistle and then it appeared that Denis [Buckley] had pushed Roman Salanoa, so he reversed the penalty there.
"But if you continue on with the game after the yellow card when John Porch goes off there’s another push-me-shove-you but nothing gets done with that.
"All we want as coaches is consistency and I didn’t feel like that there in that instance."
