PAUL O’CONNELL has never felt such satisfaction after a Munster performance this season. All season they have been struggling to find their real inner selves and, as he admitted after this stunning victory, the harder they tried the more elusive their form became. Whereupon, things fell into place yesterday although in hindsight the first signs – for themselves at any rate – were apparent a week before in the 24-23 home win over Perpignan.

“Certainly from where we’ve been coming from it’s a great feeling to finally get back to a real Munster performance,” he said, a hint of relief amid his contentment. “Reviewing the video we felt we’d done a lot of similar stuff last week but probably the three silly tries last week distorted the dominance we felt we had. We started a bit shaky today and a few silly mistakes and a few silly penalties but once we got going we really played well today and I think it was a real team performance.

“That’s the big thing about today, that’s why it felt really good in the dressingroom there. It was a really good team performance, there was no one outstanding player, no one producing something magical that won us the game. It was a serious team performance. I think we’ve got a long way to go to get up to the standards of Leinster yet but I think we’re heading in the right direction.”

Their body language en route to Catalonia and from the kick-off had been glaringly positive, not just to compete but to make things happen too. “Absolutely, and that’s what we always try and do. When we play with intensity I think we’re a very good side, when we bring that intensity to our game we can do anything. It doesn’t matter how badly you can be playing sometimes, if you play with speed, intensity and high work-rate and a good team spirit you’re always going to be difficult to beat.”

“And when you get a few guys producing a bit of magic like Jean (de Villiers) did, (Denis) Leamy’s win on the ground there, Tony Buckley winning a ball in midfield off a poach, people producing big plays like that, when you couple everything together you can achieve big performances and big things like we did today.”

Asked was he concerned about his team getting back to being the real Munster, O’Connell said: “We weren’t trying to be anything other than Munster but sometimes confidence can go and different things can start happening and you start over analysing yourself.

“Sometimes the harder you try the worse it can get and maybe that happened a little bit with us but I think we found something in the Ulster game and I think we found something again last week and today a few things came together, we got a few good turnovers at the breakdown, kicked really well in the second half and once we do those things it can all turn around in one game. Today was a big step forward for us. There’s a long way to go yet but it was a big step forward.”

Echoing his captain’s words, coach Tony McGahan commented: “We came here knowing we had to be positive, we had to play rugby. We thought we were very close last week in what we were trying to achieve. We didn’t get the tries or the breaks we wanted to but we thought with enough pressure and enough positivity on the ball we could ask them questions and we did today.

“The pack were absolutely immense, weren’t they? Leamy, Quinlan, Wallace and Donncha Ryan when he came on, were immense, and the locks, Paul O’Connell and Donncha O’Callaghan (who marries Jennifer Harte on Wednesday), were absolutely world-class, and frontrow worked their socks off – really high intensity coupled with great workload.

“We were under pressure all day and Perpignan asked a lot of questions of our defence, right on the edges and on both sides of the field. They played with a lot of width but I thought our scramble defence worked very well. We had good pace in the line and we worked very hard for each other.”

The Munster roadshow moves on to Italy when they take on a strikingly competitive Treviso. “By all accounts Treviso were unlucky to lose,” McGahan said of their 21-18 defeat to Northampton on Saturday. “They turned over Perpignan there so they’re maintaining a very strong record at home in this competition this year. We need to regroup and go there in a very positive frame of mind, and ready to roll up and do the hard work.”