IN the end it was emphatic and reassuring, a second-half Munster scoring blitz being completed by a booming drop-goal on the run from Christian Cullen and a foot-race successfully completed by Rob Henderson, Paul Burke stroked over the conversion and Munster had a commanding victory. They had outscored the visitors 30-3 in a second-half performance that will give them plenty of stomach when the Heineken starts to flow next week.

They went over for five tries with Cullen scoring two of them. It didn’t matter to the big Munster support that one of them should have been ruled out since he didn’t actually ground the ball but Cullen’s form is bubbling nicely now. The New Zealander is a totally different animal to the forlorn figure we saw last season, struggling as he was with injury and confidence. He’ll take an awful lot of watching in the weeks ahead.

When Munster cranked it up and started to devour the Cardiff lineout there was precious little the Blues could do about it.

The second half must have dragged on interminably for them because they defended for all bar a minute or two. They went away battered and exhausted having started brightly. Indeed they caused Munster a fair amount of stress in the opening minutes.

Munster have made a great play of bringing in a defensive coach to sort out their try-leaking syndrome that first surfaced in the Heineken Cup quarter-final against Stade Francais last year and continued with the loss of five touchdowns to Wasps in the semi-final, but their ills are far from being sorted out. It took Cardiff four minutes to break through here and the simplicity of it will have frightened the life out of the large Munster support, never mind Alan Gaffney, the coach.

It began with an overthrow at a lineout and then a knock-on which presented Cardiff with a scrum close-in. A free kick awarded against the Munster front-row was tapped by Kort Schubert and the No 8 found big Craig Quinnell in the right corner. Quinnell bounced a Munster tackler and went over, Lee Thomas adding the conversion.

With a week to go before the Heineken you would have expected one of the tournament favourites to have cut this kind of nonsense out of their game but no. In fact, more followed 10 minutes later when Cardiff scored their second try, thanks to more half-baked defence of their line by the home side.

Ronan O’Gara had landed a penalty to make it 7-3, and had also scared the wits out of Cardiff full-back Craig Morgan with a booming garryowen

Tries: Cullen 26, 60 Williams 45, Devlin 53, Henderson 77

Cons: O’Gara (2), Burke Pens: O’Gara (5) DG: Cullen

Tries: Quinnell 4, Schubert 14

Conversion: Thomas Penalties: Thomas (2)

Referee: D Changleng (Scotland)