The home side had a record Heineken Cup crowd to celebrate, 13,183, but after taking an early 8-0 lead they were outmuscled by Paul O’Connell’s pack and failed to take their chances.
The Scarlets may have lost Wales wing George North before kick-off, but they still felt they had enough behind the scrum to maintain their winning sequence in the Pool and end a run of 12 successive defeats to Munster.
It was as long ago as the Heineken Cup quarter-final of April, 2007, that the Scarlets last beat Munster and this made it an uncomfortable 13th straight defeat. A 14th at Thomond Park next week could be terminal for their chances of emerging from their Pool in the New Year.
Aaron Shingler got the Welsh region off to an ideal start with an early try and Rhys Priestland stretched his side’s advantage with a penalty three minutes later.
Ronan O’Gara opened Munster’s account after 27 minutes with his first penalty and that was quickly followed by Niall Ronan’s try which leveled the scores. O’Gara then had the last word of the half, slotting his second penalty a minute before the break.
Priestland and O’Gara exchanged penalties before O’Gara kicked his side six points clear.
Stephen Jones set up a grandstand finish with a 67th minute penalty, but Munster held on for the win.
Munster captain and man-of-the-match Paul O’Connell as delighted to come through unscathed with a victory.
“It’s a hell of a win for us and we are absolutely thrilled with it, but we are fully aware it’s only half-time,” said O’Connell.
“From our point of view there is nothing like a loss to focus the mind so I’d imagine next week will be an incredibly tough game. It’s a great win and we are very proud of it. I thought our pack was excellent. We got a lot of yardage from our scrum and some points from our scrum.
“There is no danger of us getting ahead of ourselves. We know how close the games are and we will be fully focused against the Scarlets next week.”
Meanwhile, Scarlets head coach Nigel Davies was left counting the cost of his team’s inability to take their chances as they ended the game with a losing bonus-point.
“We weren’t accurate enough and we had a couple of chances in the first 20 minutes we weren’t sharp enough at taking, and we left eight points place-kicking-wise and you can’t afford to do that against Munster,” said Davies.
