GRAHAM ROWNTREE DIDN’T hide his relief after his Munster team finally showed signs of progress tonight in their excellent victory over the Bulls at Thomond Park.

A stuttering start to the season had seen Munster win just one of their first four games. Tonight, however, they were impressive in large parts of their 31-17 win.

“I’m delighted, delighted with the result, and pretty much most of the performance,” said Rowntree.

“I said to the lads, ‘you can see what we’re doing coming through, look how good we are when we keep momentum, are accurate around our breakdown, when we’re disciplined, not giving up access to our 22. Look what we can do’.

“There’s elements of our attack coming through, what Mike [Prendergast] has been doing. He’s been doing some fantastic work, but more importantly I enjoyed our goalline defence at the end. Being a forwards coach, I thought the way we kept them out was admirable. 

“They [the Bulls] are very good, they have a meticulous amount tap-penalties, little clever tap-penalty moves near to the opposition goalline, and we stopped them. That element pleased me and I’m delighted with the performance from the crowd, who turned out to support us. We owed them that.”

Rowntree accepted it was crucial for Munster’s fans to see the attacking pictures on the field in a competitive match rather than to just hear that they are happening in training.

“It’s important for us and the spectators to see the fruits of our labour. I could see what Mike calls ‘green shoots’. I could see it coming in our game so far, but we could see it all come though tonight.”