Having lost six of their past eight games and suffered the massive blow of a pool-stage Champions Cup exit last weekend, there was little in the opening exchanges to suggest a change in Munster’s fortunes.<\/p>\n
While the hosts did start playing into the wind, they could get little purchase early in the game and Dragons were good value for the13-0 lead they built across the first half hour of play.<\/p>\n
Experienced full-back Angus O’Brien kicked a pair of penalties either side of hooker Brodie Coghlan’s try from the back of a menacing maul. <\/p>\n
Dragons were unflustered even by the yellow card shown to Harry Beddall for taking out Thaakir Abrahams in the air and, after the flanker’s return from his 19th-minute yellow card, the visitors thought they had extended their lead further.<\/p>\n
Scrum-half Che Hope did excellently to win the race to David Richards’ kick ahead but, upon review, it was ruled that the Munster carrier had got a knee to ground just prior to Beddall’s strip.<\/p>\n
That decisions loomed all the larger when, just 90 seconds before the interval, Munster’s Springbok lock Jean Kleyn muscled over from close range.<\/p>\n
There was a similar momentum swing to start the second half when Munster’s maul looked to put the pressure on the Dragons in the corner. With a score seeming likely, instead the ball popped out and Rio Dyer gathered before racing away from danger.<\/p>\n
Just three minutes later, Dragons made the most of the escape with a well-worked try from deep as Tinus de Beer chased and caught his own kick before putting Richards across.<\/p>\n
Leading 20-7 with 28 minutes remaining, Dragons’ will have felt a first league win outside of Wales since October 2021 was there for the taking.<\/p>\n
But with Coombes emerging from the bench as a replacement for Kleyn, it was Munster who instead ended their own unwanted winless streak.<\/p>\n
The 28-year-old was perhaps fortunate that Hollie Davidson’s on-field decision had been to award a try when replays of the grounding of his first score in the 57th minute appeared inconclusive.<\/p>\n
There was no doubt about his second, however, from similarly close range with the score and subsequent conversion bringing Munster back within a point with 15 minutes to go.<\/p>\n
The comeback was complete 10 minutes later as Tony Butler’s straightforward penalty from in front of the posts gave Munster their first lead of the game.<\/p>\n
Twice Munster would take aim for the corner in the closing stages but one effort was kicked dead while a second, from a brilliant 50:22, led only to a line-out that saw them held up over the line.<\/p>\n
Instead, four points would be their reward from a night when Clayton McMillan’s side again failed to convince.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Having lost six of their past eight games and suffered the massive blow of a pool-stage Champions Cup…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260834,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-260833","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}