Glasgow Warriors were tonight bullied out of contention against reigning European champions and current Magners League table-toppers Munster at Firhill tonight.

The only real positive to take from the game was in fact off the field as 3,651 fans turned out to cheer on The Biggest Team in Glasgow. Tonight's attendance being more than double that of the same fixture last year.

After the game, a despondent Warriors head coach, Sean Lineen, said: “We let in two soft tries out of nothing. We didn’t win the game-line battle and we didn’t front-up physically. We were simply out-muscled.

“They had a very simple game-plan, maybe we just tried to play too much rugby.”

The Warriors started the game brightly and opened the scoring through winger Lome Fa’atau.

A trademark step from Max Evans broke the Munster defence. Fa’atau received a neat offload and soared to the line. Dan Parks, who struggled to find the target all night, missed the conversion.

Munster struck back immediately and flanker Niall Ronan crossed for the first of his hat-trick of tries.

A short pop pass from the fringe of the breakdown was enough to send him home as he burst through the Warriors defence with a display of sheer power.

Glasgow continued to battle hard and bore some fruit of their own just minutes later. Kelly Brown took a quick penalty, having spotted a slowly retreating Munster defence, and barged his way over the line.

Keith Earls claimed the fourth try of the half to put Munster back in front. Stand-off Paul Warwick pealed round his opposite man and offloaded to Earls who burst behind the Glasgow back-line.

Dan Parks found the target with the last of his five first-half attempts at goal. However, this was not enough to give Glasgow an advantage as they trailed the visitors by a single point (13-14) at the break.

Ronan bagged his second score only eight minutes into the second period. As replacement Colin Gregor tracked the ball back over his own try line, he was deemed to have touched the ball before grounding it, therefore a penalty was awarded to Munster from which Ronan scored.

Ronan completed his hat-trick, and earned Munster’s bonus point try, on the hour mark as the men in red roared towards the line following their own lineout.

Amongst a pile of bodies, it was Ronan who was awarded the try and the celebrations began for the small number of visiting fans.

Glasgow Warriors: Bernardo Stortoni; Lome Fa’atau, Max Evans, Ruaridh Jackson, Colin Shaw; Dan Parks, Mark McMillan; Justin Va’a, Fergus Thomson, Moray Low, Tim Barker, Alastair Kellock CAPTAIN, James Eddie, Calum Forrester, Johnnie Beattie
Substitutes: Calum Forrester for Beattie (12 mins), Colin Gregor for Stortoni (31 mins), Dougie Hall for Thomson (48 mins), Dan Turner for Barker (56 mins), Peter Horne for Parks (59 mins), Kevin Tkachuk for Va’a (63 mins), Jose Maria Nunez Piossek for McMillan (67 mins)

Munster: Denis Hurley; Doug Howlett, Keith Earls, Lifeimi Mafi, Barry Murphy; Paul Warwick, Peter Stringer; Federico Pucciarello, Denis Fogarty, Tony Buckley, Mick O’Dricoll CAPTAIN, Donnacha Ryan, Alan Quinlan, Niall Ronan, James Coughlan
Substitutes: Michael Essex, Darragh Hurley, Billy Holland, Tommy O’Donnell, Tomas O’Leary, Jeremy Manning, Kieran Lewis