CHARLIE O’SHEA LEFT the Thomond Park pitch to a standing ovation following an outstanding 69-minute display.

It was dream stuff from a 20-year-old who was making his first start for the province.

Indeed, tonight’s 26-22 victory marked just the out-half’s second cap. He ensured it was one to remember, the Cork native proving a constant threat as he supplied two tries, one sublime assist and kicked three conversions.

“Yeah, phenomenal,” said Munster head coach Clayton McMillan.

“You don’t want to blow too much smoke up his backside. It’s the early days, but he’s had a couple of runs now and he’s taken to it like a duck to water.

“A lot of confidence for a young man but it comes from doing the homework during the week and getting over what he knows the team needs him to do, and he’s done that with aplomb. 

“But also it was good to see JJ (Hanrahan) come on, who’s at the other end of his career and I think he put in two or three kicks that were pretty vital to put them on their back fence, and they had to work their way out of the game late, so those things were pleasing.”

Scrum-half Craig Casey returned for his first appearance of the season, captaining the side and joining O’Shea in the half-backs.

“So composed in fairness all week,” Casey of the young out-half.

“As an older statesman now I was kind of toying with ‘do I try and take a bit over?’ but I said during the week, ‘Just play your game, Charlie and I’ll feed off that, find your voice,’ and my God he found his voice, all week to be fair. 

Charlie O’Shea and Craig Casey celebrate the win. Bryan Keane Bryan Keane

“He’s a great kid, like Donk (McMillan) said, works very hard and so diligent and just feeds confidence to the rest of the group so hats off to him. 

“I thought he was awesome and he has been for the last six, seven weeks in pre-season as well. He’s a very impressive kid. It was a real team performance as well.” 

Which is perhaps the most pleasing aspect of tonight’s bonus-point win. While O’Shea led the way, this was a strong team performance where a number of young players stood up and delivered.

Last week, McMillan spoke about trying to rebuild the connection with Munster supporters after the challenges of last season. Tonight, the 10,000-strong home support clearly appreciated what they saw on the pitch.

“Yeah well I hope so. There was lots to like about last week’s game (v Glasgow), but it wasn’t good enough to get us over the line.

“Tonight was another massive test and we didn’t get it all perfect tonight either, but the areas that I thought were significantly better were our setpiece, our scrum was strong, for the most part our lineout was good, (Kieran) Brookesy at makeshift hooker probably had a couple he’d take back but that’s the position we’re in and it says a lot about him that he was prepared to jump in and fill that role.

“Lots of younger guys got a run, Gordy Wood came onto the bench late, Evan O’Connell has had his third 80 minutes in a row, Seán Edogbo, first game playing at Thomond Park, there are lots of young guys who we’ve been talking about as having potential and it speaks well for the future of Munster Rugby.

“But we’re far from the finished product, and we’ll just keep beavering away.”

It was put to McMillan that his side had to “dog it out” against the South African side.

“It’s interesting you use those words because we had Jerry Flannery come in yesterday, present the boys jerseys at our captain’s run and the words he used were ‘dig in, just dig in,” McMillan revealed.

“‘Dig in in the good times, dig in in the bad times, dig in when you’re tired’. I thought that was pretty apt today.”