Leinster made to sweat by stubborn Brive

Heineken Cup Pool Six/Leinster 27 Brive 10: A STOP-START phase of the season and a stop-start performance. Leinster struggled to find their customary rhythm against a predictably obdurate Brive, who played much of the well-travelled pros who also made London Irish sweat until the 80th minute for a bonus point .

A cosmopolitan side with their smattering of English-speaking players, many of whom were being given a rare enough start by Ugo Mola, were up for the fight big-time.

Players such as Steve Thompson and Alix Popham, who is trying to play his way back into the Welsh set-up, were never likely to roll over and have their bellies tickled. No-one typified this more than Damien Browne, who made his massive physical presence count from the start. A missed tackle by the ex-Connacht lock near the end of the first half stood out because it was about the only mistake you could recall him making.

And the more they resisted Leinster, the more this brave Brive grew into the match. Their makeshift backline never really played with much wit or width, but their pack of bruisers enjoyed taking on Leinster with their maul and pick-and-go rumbles.

Cometh the hour though, or to be precise the 80th minute, and cometh you know who. Ultimately, the bonus point accrued by Brian O’Driscoll with the last play of the match minute courtesy of Shane Horgan’s wondrous handwork mattered more than the performance for what will be merely a footnote in Leinster’s season. Besides which, as events in Llanelli yesterday underlined, verily it is an 80-minute game.

Had there been colour graphs to illustrate this contest, the pitch would have been covered in vast swathes of blue, such was Leinster’s dominance of possession and territory. Their set-pieces were excellent, with the lineout ensuring a steady stream of quality ball and though their scrum began to buckle when Brive supplemented their big, bruising pack by emptying the bench, by then it had also yielded a penalty try.

That the penalty try remained the only score of a one-sided first half illustrated Leinster’s acute frustration.

Admittedly, the four five-metre scrums followed a well-worked set-piece move in which Gordon D’Arcy’s remodelled passing provided the width by locating Rob Kearney for a kick and chase up the line by the ever-dangerous Isa Nacewa.

But despite other examples of promising approach play and waves of attacks deep inside the Brive 22, Leinster couldn’t push further ahead by the break.

They could perhaps have made more of the blind side to make the pitch wider, and were also a little soft around the fringes, with only Jamie Heaslip really providing them with go-forward momentum.

In what was undoubtedly a hard-working performance, their cleaning out was generally pretty good too, but while they exhaustively went through the phases, they could have lightened their load by making more of their offloading game.

At times quite patterned, their stuttering performance was also bedeviled by imprecision, with even the great one mucking up a set move with a wayward inside pass.

Shane Jennings played remarkably well given it was his first game in 14 weeks, making his presence felt at the breakdown, marshalling the defence and giving some continuity, most notably when providing the link between Horgan and Heaslip to spark a furious assault on the Brive line.

Jonathan Sexton, O’Driscoll and Horgan were all held up within a yard of that line, and one had to acknowledge the resilience of Brive’s defending, as exemplified in that spell by the last-ditch tackling of Scott Spedding, Jamie Noon and Lacklam Mackay. Even teams with a more tangible interest in the outcome than the pointless French outfit might have buckled.

Leinster needed the injection of dynamic ball-carrying which Seán O’Brien provided, his typically barnstorming break re-igniting Leinster midway through the second period and leading to D’Arcy beating Mackay’s tackle following another good rumble by Heaslip for Leinster’s third try.

With the rest of the side seemingly picking itself, Cheika’s most difficult conundrum this week will undoubtedly be at openside.

By then, Leinster had traded tries in the third quarter. Leinster have a good kick-chase game and another key moment was Spedding’s knock-on from Eoin Reddan’s steepling box kick.

Sexton, who made light of his five-week lay-off, took the ball up from the recycle and from O’Driscoll’s wristy skip pass superb lines of running and handling by Kearney, Kevin McLaughlin and especially O’Driscoll again saw Nacewa score.

Retief Uys ploughed over for Brive’s first try before Spedding finished a pitch-length counter instigated by Viliam Waqaseduadua. That had followed Kearney’s “fresh-air” kick to pass up the chance of a try after Nacewa had latched on to Sexton’s cleverly weighted chip inside half-way. It looked as if it might be a telling 14-point swing against the holders, but approaching the 80th minute they had a scrum 40 metres out.

Cheika has bought smartly again in the summer, and Shaun Beirne underlined the value of his acquisition with the long skip pass which put Kearney away. Horgan took a clever diagonal line infield before slipping a one-handed under-arm pass for his old mate to run in the fourth try by the corner flag.

It was so good that it stood up to repeated viewing, the crowd appreciating it even more in slow motion replays.

SCORING SEQUENCE: 26 mins: Penalty try, Sexton con 7-0; (half-time 7-0); 43: Sexton pen 10-0; 45: Nacewa try 15-0; 60: Uys try 15-5; 67: D’Arcy try, Sexton con 22-5; 77: Spedding try 22-10; 80: O’Driscoll try 27-10.

LEINSTER: R Kearney; S Horgan, B O’Driscoll, G D’Arcy, I Nacewa; J Sexton, E Reddan; C Healy, J Fogarty, S Wright, L Cullen, N Hines, K McLaughlin, S Jennings, J Heaslip.

Replacements: S O’Brien for Jennings (48 mins), CJ Van Der Linde for Wright (55 mins), S Berne for D’Arcy (75 mins). Not used: B Jackman, M Ross, M O’Kelly, P O’Donohoe, G Dempsey.

BRIVE: S Spedding; N Jeanjean, J Noon, L Mackay, H Agulla; L Orquera, J Pejoine; P Henn, S Thompson, P Idieder, R Uys, D Browne, A Popham, F Domingo, A Claassen (capt).

Replacements: P Toderasc for Henn, S Perry for Pejoine, P Barnard for Idieder (all half-time), R Bianco for Orquera (55 mins), G Ribes for Thompson, C Short for Browne, S Azoulai for Domingo (all 60 mins), V Waqaseduadua for Noon (66 mins).

Referee: Andrew Small (England).