Clayton McMillan and Craig Casey hailed a "phenomenal" performance from out-half Charlie O'Shea, as Munster ground the Bulls down for their first win of the URC season.

The province scored four tries in their 26-22 bonus-point victory, with 16 of those coming from their academy out-half, who scored two tries and three conversions in a dazzling performance.

The 20-year-old made his competitive debut off the bench in last week’s defeat to the Glasgow Warriors, but he was the standout player in his first start tonight departing on 68 minutes to standing ovation at Thomond Park.

"Yeah, phenomenal," head coach McMillan (below) said, when asked about O’Shea’s performance, before attempting to turn down the hype.

"You don't want to blow too much smoke up his backside, it's the early days but he's had a couple of runs now and he's taken to it like a duck to water.

"A lot of confidence for a young man but it comes from doing the homework during the week and getting over what he knows the team needs him to do, and he's done that with aplomb.

"But also it was good to see JJ [Hanrahan] come on, who's at the other end of his career and I think he put in two or three kicks that were pretty vital to put them on their back fence and they had to work their way out of the game late, so those things were pleasing."

O’Shea linked up well all evening with scrum-half Casey, and Munster’s captain for the evening said the performance of his young team-mate came as no surprise to him.

"So composed in fairness, all week," Casey said.

"As an elder statesman now, I was kind of toying with 'do I try and take a bit over?’ but I said during the week, ‘Just play your game, Charlie and I'll feed off that, find your voice,’ and my God he found his voice, all week to be fair.

"He's a great kid, like Donk [McMillan] said, works very hard and so diligent and just feeds confidence to the rest of the group so hats off to him.

"I thought he was awesome and he has been for the last six, seven weeks in pre-season as well. He's a very impressive kid."

While O’Shea’s performance grabbed the headlines, Munster supporters will have been encouraged by the way their side beat the Bulls in an arm-wrestle.

The province earned their win without any luck, losing Michael Milne and Diarmuid Kilgallen to early injuries, while they finished with Kieran Brookes playing at hooker, such is the extent of their injury list.

And McMillan was thrilled with the heart shown by his side in the second half as they came from behind to close out the win, crediting some words of wisdom from a Munster legend.

"We had Jerry Flannery come in yesterday and present the boys jerseys at our captain's run, and the words he used were: ‘Dig in, just dig in. Dig in in the good times, dig in in the bad times, dig in when you're tired’. I thought that was pretty apt today.

"There was lots to like about last week's game, but it wasn't good enough to get us over the line.

"Tonight was another massive test and we didn't get it all perfect tonight either, but the areas that I thought were significantly better were our setpiece; our scrum was strong, for the most part our lineout was good, [Kieran] Brookesy at makeshift hooker probably had a couple he'd take back but that's the position we're in and it says a lot about him that he was prepared to jump in and fill that role.

"Lots of younger guys got a run, Gordy Wood came onto the bench late, Evan O'Connell has had his third 80 minutes in a row, Sean Edogbo - first game playing at Thomond Park - there's lots of young guys who we've been talking about as having potential and it speaks well for the future of Munster Rugby.

"But we're far from the finished product and we'll just keep beavering away," he added.