Champions can't afford any hint of complacency

ON RUGBY:Leinster will be looking for a more sustained 80-minute performance than they produced last week to overcome confident Glasgow, writes GERRY THORNLEY.

WELCOME BACK, H Cup! Whatever is in its DNA, it’s the competition sprinkled with magic alright. It wasn’t just the four games involving the Irish provinces which provided riveting edge-of-the-seat drama. Everywhere you looked it seemed to be the same; right up until Sunday with Glasgow’s freakish, overtime win over Bath and Clement Poitrenaud’s late match-wining try for Toulouse, whose game with Gloucester was more exciting viewing than the France-England World Cup quarter-final. Definitely the best competition in the world.

Early days, admittedly, but in contrast to his IRB counterpart Paddy O’Brien, the ERC referees’ chief Donal Courtney can take encouragement from the opening dozen games. Thankfully, there appeared to be less high hits, the rugby generally flowed, there was less aimless hoofing and while the breakdown and scrum interpretation remain an issue, it’s not to the same degree as at the World Cup.

While it was a pretty good and thrilling weekend for the Irish, it also provided a wonderful double up for the Scots with Edinburgh and Glasgow taking down English sides, and a trio of Welsh wins over French teams. Indeed, the only Pro 12 sides to lose were Connacht and the two Italian sides.

Further evidence, perhaps, of a levelling off in standards and the increased competitiveness within the Heineken Cup, was that only Saracens registered an attacking bonus point in their 42-17 win at home to Treviso. By comparison, there were seven one-point games and thus seven bonus points for the losing team. All of which also served to highlight you don’t always need a plethora of tries.

Mind you, even the Cup might struggle to top that next weekend, and such is its intensity, of course, that all the Irish provinces merely managed to achieve was give themselves a chance of survival as defeat, especially at home for either Munster or Ulster, would have left them snookered in advance of away games against Castres and Leicester. To a degree, there is greater pressure on Connacht and, even more so, Leinster this weekend.

The quartet all move on with lessons to be learned or cracks to be filled in more substantially.

Admittedly, some of this is beyond control, for the benefits of experience and calm heads in a crisis were recurring themes.

Collectively, Connacht cannot bring it to the party on their debut, and perhaps that contributed to them not maximizing their momentum when they came back to within two points of Harlequins. Still, they were clearly inspired by the occasion, for their physicality was noticeably up on previous Pro12 outings, and they’ll need that for the visit of Toulouse.

By contrast, no one has more of the stuff than Munster, and they’ll always have it as long as Ronan O’Gara is there. He really is a one-off, and it helped paper over the cracks of their struggling scrum and their curious failure to twice break away from their potent maul, which they’ll need against Castres.

Recalling last year’s three defeats on the road, this is also, possibly, a must-win game again. Admittedly, Northampton’s scrum is as good as any around, and there was a case for making them favourites going into this season’s competition.

Ulster were let off the hook a little by yet another outbreak of the yips for Clermont’s kickers as they partially imploded in losing for a sixth time out of six on Irish soil, but Ian Humphreys’ late heroics at least means Ulster are not up against the wall when he returns to his old Welford Road haunt next Saturday.

Leinster’s performance was probably the most mixed, albeit much improved after the break when they played with more depth and varied their running lines, as well as upping their intensity.

But well though Montpellier took a leaf out of the Welsh defensive manual by tackling low to chop down Sean O’Brien and co, there must be a slight concern in the Leinster camp that last season’s Player of the Year may be looking a little tired and even a tad on the light side. His phenomenally consistent impact in virtually every game at every level over the last dozen months or so has been incredible and cannot be sustained indefinitely.

Leinster miss Isa Nacewa’s ability to strike from fullback, although Rob Kearney is making an increasingly encouraging return to form, and it’s also understandably and predictably evident that Brian O’Driscoll’s sheer presence is impossible to replicate, no matter how many others attempt to step up to the plate.

It’s not just what he can do himself, whether on the ball or in defence, it’s his ability to tactically read games and positions, and advise team-mates accordingly.

For all that, Joe Schmidt, his coaches and the squad will take heart from the impact which the Leinster bench had on the game, none more so than Seán Cronin with his very first line. Schmidt sounded rueful afterwards, for while the comeback to earn a draw was a worthy one, ultimately they’ll view it as a game they should have won and perhaps might have done so had they elected for a shot at goal to level the match at 16-all with 10 minutes left.

Their eagerness and ambition for a four-point haul was understandable, but leaving aside the possibility that they had enough time to go back downfield for a second three-pointer, a draw didn’t just earn them a second match point instead of one, it also denied Montpellier two match points. Whether Montpellier rediscover the inspiration from their debut and playing in front of a bigger home crowd when Glasgow and Bath come calling remains to be seen, but Schmidt, for one, believes either of those visitors might make off with a bigger haul.

The prevailing view was that Richie Gray’s freakish late try was good news for Leinster in that it prevented Bath from procuring a valuable late win. But that’s only the case if they can make the RDS hum, never as easy on a Sunday, against Glasgow, when the Scots will travel buoyed by their fifth win in a row and the memory of an earlier league win in the RDS which kick-started their season. As is their style, Glasgow can afford to swing from the hip, but you’d imagine Leinster benefit significantly from last week’s eye-opener with a more sustained 80-minute performance.

PS: It’s bad enough that the paymasters have decreed players must now suffer 15 minute half-time intervals to allow for more commercials as well as advertising. There assuredly isn’t a coaching session in the world which incorporates a 15-minute interlude, during which bodies stiffen up.

In Thomond Park, as Nigel Owens was still being ‘miked up’ after the appointed kick-off time, you also had the sight of cameramen encroaching onto the pitch as Munster awaited the kick-off with players having cameras stuck in their faces.

To top all that off, there wasn’t a match clock anywhere to be seen for the benefit of 27,000 spectators at Thomond Park.