Bonus Point Win For Munster in Treviso –

A 78th minute try from Simon Zebo, his second of the game, helped Munster to a 35-14 bonus point victory over Benetton Treviso in Stadio di Monigo.

Munster had the ideal start when Treviso ran a ball inside their own 22 but had an attempted kick charged down by Danny Barnes who collected to score. O'Gara landed the conversion for a seven point lead with less than four minutes gone.

Five minutes later a clever kick ahead from Zebo was collected by Barnes who then delayed his pass back to Zebo to perfection and the left wing twisted over for his try needed the confirmation of the TMO.

Munster extended the lead when O'Gara landed his third successful effort after Treviso were penalised for a high tackle on Barnes and shortly after O'Gara chipped through for Johne Murphy to score his side's third try, O'Gara once again on the money with the conversion.

The half ended with Treviso forcing a succession of five metre scrums but Munster's defence was immense until deep in added time after Mick O'Driscoll had departed to the sin-bin, when Fabio Semenzato squeezed over for Willem De Wall to convert.

Munster were reduced to 13 when Zebo saw yellow in the 47th minute and shortly after he departed Treviso scored their second try in the right hand corner with De Wall landing the difficult conversion.

Two more O'Gara penalties saw the Munster lead go out to 30-14 towards the end of the third quarter but they had to wait until the very end for their bonus point victory that moves them to third place in the table.

Benneton Treviso: L Nitoglia; T Iannone, E Galon, A Sgarbi, B Williams; W De Waal, F Semenzato; M Muccignat, F Sbaraglini, P Di Santo; A Pavanello (capt) C van Zyl; P Derbyshire, B Vermaak, M Filipucci. Replacements: E Ceccato, A Allori, I Fernandez Rouyet, V Bernabò, G Padrò, G Garcia, E Gori, A Di Bernardo.

Munster: D Hurley; J Murphy, D Barnes, L Mafi, S Zebo; R O’Gara, T O’Leary; W du Preez, D Varley, BJ Botha; D Ryan, M O’Driscoll (capt); David O’Callaghan, P O’Mahony J Coughlan. Replacements: D Fogarty, M Horan, S Archer, B. Holland, T O’Donnell, D Williams, S Deasy, F Jones.

Referee: N Hennessy (Wales).