A victory at the Sportground this evening would go a long way towards securing the first of those objectives, with Munster just three points ahead of their neighbours in Conference A with nine league matches to play.

Yet there remains the nagging suspicion that for all their home dominance, van Graan’s side are still susceptible to travel sickness. Munster have clambered aboard the team bus eight times this season and returned home with just two victories and a draw for their efforts away from home.

So with a difficult high-stakes visit to Gloucester in the penultimate Champions Cup pool round just six days later, tonight’s jaunt up the M18, the shortest road trip of the season, adds weight to every one of those 108km between Limerick and Galway.

Munster defence coach JP Ferreira certainly senses a different mindset when his players leave home and, in an interview with the Irish Examiner before Christmas, cited the Champions Cup round-four performance in Castres, a game lost 13-12 and decided by a single try conceded from close range and on the fringes of a ruck, as evidence behind his theory.

“It is a concentration thing,” said Ferreira. “It’s funny, when you get into that red zone and you feel the pressure of your tryline and it’s creeping closer, when you get there

it’s almost panic stations and the lads

feel the pressure but sometimes you have to be very calm where you are and so the more pressure situations I can put them under in training, the calmer they will get.

“But the first time Castres got in there and they came through the ruck and got momentum down that side and got to the 5m line, you know, it’s just an attitude thing to stop them on the tryline. Look, we’ve been good at it this year but, especially away from home, you want to stake that claim.

“If you can get away from there, like we did at Thomond Park, where they were on our try line and we defended and defended and we looked so at ease, because we got our home crowd behind us; if you can do that and play that role exactly as it was but away from home, where there’s a crowd that’s against you and drums playing and people booing and stuff like that, if you can just change it and get in there, that’s what I’m after at the moment.

“I’m after these away games because once you can nail that down, I’m not saying the home games are easy but it’s your stadium, your crowd, your people, so it becomes easy from that view.”

Connacht may be Munster’s nearest neighbours but that will only intensify the clamour for a home bragging rights and the Sportsground will be a sell-out as the visitors bid to claim a first away win on Irish soil since their visit to the same ground on New Year’s Eve 2016.

Connacht are certainly in a better place than back then, in the midst of an ill-fated title defence and with a head coach in Pat Lam who had announced just three weeks earlier that he was set to quit at the end of the campaign.

After a false start with Kieran Keane at the helm last season, Connacht have finally found their feet again under the charge of Australian Andy Friend. Their victory at home over Ulster eight days ago was their seventh in 12 PRO14 rounds, equalling their total return for the 21 games of 2017-18. They are also 13 points better off than this time last year with Friend having restored belief and confidence in a squad little changed from the one Keane left behind.

After a heartbreakingly narrow defeat at Leinster the weekend before Christmas, the 21-12 win over Ulster has regained momentum and Connacht will be just as buoyed as their visitors by their most recent interprovincial outing, for whom victory over Leinster was their eighth of the season, a total bettered only by the defending champions.

Expect another tough night in the trenches and a compelling contest as these teams fight it out for second place in the conference. Munster have more to lose in the context of their overall season and cannot afford another away loss. That should be enough to concentrate minds as van Graan’s side bid to start 2019 on a high.

CONNACHT: D Leader; C Kelleher, T Farrell, T Daly, M Healy; J Carty, C Blade; D Buckley, D Heffernan - captain, D Robertson Mc-Coy; G Thornbury, Q Roux; P Boyle, C Fainga’a, E Masterson.

Replacements: T McCartney, P McCabe, F Bealham, U Dillane, C Gallagher, A Lloyd, D Horwitz, C DeBuitlear.

MUNSTER: A Conway; K Earls, C Farrell, D Goggin, A Wootton; J Carbery, A Mathewson; Jeremy Loughman, N Scannell, J Ryan; J Kleyn, T Beirne; P O’Mahony - captain, T O’Donnell, A Botha.

Replacements: K O’Byrne, D Kilcoyne, S Archer, B Holland, CJ Stander, C Murray, T Bleyendaal, S Arnold.

Referee: Mike Adamson (Scotland)