Competitive battle but opportunities squandered by Scarlets

Thomond Park staged the sixth round Guinness PRO12 clash between Munster Rugby and Scarlets in a game that saw a stop start affair with the home side taking the all-important victory ahead of next week’s opening round of European rugby.

Scarlets headed to Limerick, fully focused on the PRO12 clash, looking for a performance and a victory to stake a claim on the top four.

Despite a strong start at Thomond Park, and a brave and determined effort at the close, Scarlets went down to a 17-6 defeat against Munster after an 80 minutes strewn with penalties.

Scarlets Head Coach Wayne Pivac said: “It was a night where we made it difficult for ourselves I thought. We knew it was going to be difficult coming here, we expected a good tough and close encounter. At half time I thought that’s exactly how it panned out. – at 8-6 we were definitely in the game.”

Munster took the upper hand at the restart with a solid opening exchange to the second half. Pivac went on to say: “Too many unforced errors, by us, cost us. Having said that, there were a lot of penalties against us – which we’ll need to have a look at.

“Opportunities were squandered when we got into their half. We had three or four attacking opportunities but once again errors let us down.”

With current European champions Toulon up next in the opening round of the Rugby Champions Cup Scarlets will be looking to stamp out the errors this week, Pivac continued: “It was a reasonably competitive game but certainly not the right result for us. There were a lot of individual errors but those sort of the things we’d like to think we can get out of the game quickly.

“We were really focused on this week. The Champions Cup starts next week and this was a big game for us. We wanted to be in an arm wrestle and a tight game and come out the other side.”