Howley and King hold the keys for Wasps

Having faced Munster in the Heineken Cup pool stages in the last two seasons, Nigel Melville, the Gloucester director of rugby, is uniquely qualified to offer his former club Wasps five ways to expose weaknesses in the Irish province's armoury in Sunday's semi-final in Dublin. Here is how Melville believes they can win.

Attack Munster's back three (full-back and both wings)

They don't have that much pace out wide even though they now have Christian Cullen in the team. The All Black hasn't been playing that well and Wasps can really attack their back three.

Cause confusion in midfield

The Wasps centre pairing of Fraser Waters and Stuart Abbott are very different from the Munster duo of Rob Henderson and Mike Mullins. The Irish guys are more physical and direct while Waters and Abbott can run different lines of attack and set other kinds of problems that the Wasps support runners can feed off.

Use Alex King's kicking game

Munster will not be used to defending against a left-footed kicker from No10 and Alex has the ability to get the ball into difficult areas behind those Munster wings, who can't turn quickly. It's an area of the game that Wasps can really exploit by getting their wings up quickly to put real pressure on their opposite numbers.

Attacking the blind side of rucks and mauls

Wasps will try to play this match at a tempo that Munster are not used to and that will involve dragging the Irish players from side to side to create space. When it appears on the blind side then Wasps exploit these opportunities very well. Rob Howley is a master of this kind of tactic.

Rob Howley's box kicking

Rob is a hugely experienced scrum-half and has always had the ability to put in high hanging box kicks that turn the defence and allow team-mates to compete for possession. Munster will be very aware of the threat he poses.