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.

It was a victory that moves Munster up to 3rd place in the table, four points behind Ospreys with a game in hand, and was impressive in that it was their first outing in almost six weeks.

Also impressive was the performace of Ronan O'Gara who struck the ball beautifully all day to pick up the Man of the Match accolade while Damien Varley, Peter O'Mahony, James Coughlan and Simon Zebo were others to catch the eye in what was an all round team effort.

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 that 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 an alert 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's Cornel Van Zyl 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 when Scott Deasy, O'Gara's replacement minutes earlier, made the most of space on the left for Zebo to score in the corner.

Munster: D Hurley; J Murphy (F Jones, 60), D Barnes, L Mafi, S Zebo; R O'Gara (S Deasy, 75), T O'Leary (D Williams, 56); W Du Preez (M Horan, 50), D Varley (D Fogarty, 75), BJ Botha (S Archer, 70); D Ryan, M O'Driscoll (capt; B Holland, 70); D O'Callaghan (T O'Donnell, 68), P O'Mahony, J Coughlan. Yellow card: O'Driscoll 40, Zebo 45.

Benetton Treviso: L Nitoglia; T Iannone, E Galon (G Garcia, 56), A Sgarbi, B Williams; W de Waal, F Semenzato; Muccignat (A Allori, 70), F Sbaraglini (E Ceccato, 50), P Di Santo (I Fernandez-Rouyet, 50); A Pavanello (capt), C Van Zyl; P Derbyshire (V Bernabo, 41), B Vermaak (G Padro, 32), M Filippucci. Yellow cards: Barnabo 69.

Referee: N Hennessy.