FORWARDS coach Ceri Jones believes Newport Gwent Dragons can upset the odds in Cork this evening as long as they avoid being cornered by Guinness PRO12 pacesetters Munster.

The Dragons head to Musgrave Park in search of their first away win of the season while they have won just once on Munster soil.

That Thomond Park success came in 2004, the first season of regional rugby, when Andy Marinos captained a side featuring Percy Montgomery, Bobby Skinstad, Rod Snow and a young Luke Charteris.

Few will be giving Kingsley Jones’ side a chance of recording a first PRO12 away win since beating Treviso in March, 2015 but the forwards coach insists Cork provides a golden opportunity.

Ceri Jones said: “We are not going to shy away from our away record, it’s been poor this year, but where better place to start to turn it around than Munster?

“We are well aware of the challenge and it’s about the key moments. What we have to do is put an 80-minute performance in, do that and we can be competitive any team in the league but we’ve got to stop making stupid errors.”

It’s those errors that have seen the Dragons put under pressure by driving lineouts in their last three games against Brive, Newcastle and Gloucester.

“The amount of opportunities we are giving people to maul is disappointing,” admitted Jones.

“We are giving too many penalties away in the middle of the field, which means that we are in the corner and that’s testing our driving maul defence a lot.

“Our defensive lineout has been good but the maul is a difficult thing to stop if you keep giving teams opportunity after opportunity.”

Jones has tasted victory once as a player at Munster, when a member of the Harlequins side that caused a shock in the semi-finals of the European Challenge Cup in 2011, and knows his charges will have to be at the top of their game.

“Munster have the best defence in the PRO12 and it’s a very difficult place to go,” he said.

“They are very direct, they kick the ball quite a bit and have a very good maul. They look to put you under the squeeze and then run very, very direct when they get into your 22.

“We have to stop them at source and we have to be better with our defence of the driving maul. We have to be smart, work hard and put big collisions in.”