Last night Munster began their Celtic League campaign and they’ll surely be disappointed with the performance. Munster showed little of the form that helped them beat Newcastle in there pre-season friendlies and were it not for flashes of brilliance from Christian Cullen and an another impressive performance from Dennis Leamy the score line could have been far far worse.



Munster came into the game lacking a lot of their big names, but the Ospreys will be in their Heineken Cup pool this year so a good performance would have been most desirable for Gaffney’s men.



The match started slowly with an extremely error prone first 20 minutes, before Osprey’s finally slotted over a penalty given after Munster’s Jerry Flannery very cynically tripped Gavin Henson. Around 10 minutes later Osprey’s new scrum-half Jason Spice picked up a try to take The Ospreys 10 points into the clear. Munster then did what did so many times in the Celtic League last season, let indiscipline ruin their chances.

Flannery got himself sin binned shortly after the Spice try and following that The Ospreys got another try with a penalty converted shortly afterwards to take them 20 points to nothing at the break.



Munster played better in the second half with Paul Burke finally managing to get something right with an early penalty. The Ospreys then started to let Munster back into the game, and Christian Cullen was rewarded with a try under the posts to bring Munster to within 10 points of the Welshmen.



Unfortunately for Munster they couldn’t keep the pressure on and The Ospreys went over in the corner for another converted try to seal the game. However it wasn’t over yet, Christian Cullen managed to score once more, and even then there was another try in the game with the Ospreys scoring once more at the death to pick up the bonus point. In the end the game finish Ospreys 34 - 17 Munster

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 4th, 2004 at 4:35 am and is filed under Munster, Celtic League. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.