Luckless Leinster fall at first fence

European Cup/Leinster 19 Bath 22: Of all the bitter pills Leinster have had to consume in recent years, few will have been as hard to swallow as this one. There was much to admire in Leinster's often daring and brave effort against a more streetwise, defensively composed but comparatively limited Bath outfit on Saturday. The bottom line, however, is that, for all the openings they created, Leinster lost at home to an unexceptional, mid-table English team.

Perhaps this was the fates redressing the balance of last season's meeting at the Rec, when Leinster stole a match they had no right to win. But for a whole variety of reasons - new team, new home, new coaching ticket, opening weekend - they needed this one much more.

With Leinster shorn of all but four of those thieves at the Rec, a lengthy injury list containing four Lions was compounded on the morning of the match with the withdrawal of the scrum's anchor, Will Green.

Sure enough their scrum creaked under pressure, and their lineout - lacking zip, variation and movement - coughed up five or six balls and was mainly responsible for them losing their way and allowing Steve Borthwick, Danny Grewcock and co to impose their juggernaut pack and pick-and-go drives in the second quarter.

And amid a surfeit of handling errors, forced passes and panicky decision-making, the more experienced heads were more culpable. Perhaps sometimes you can want a win too much.

Yet the desire and positiveness with which Leinster initially set off and then, roared on by most in the 13,100 crowd, set about trying to retrieve the game in the last half-hour deserved better than one bonus point.

Their callow pack hit the breakdown and rucks with a ferocity that more than matched Bath. They withstood the mauling pretty well too, many of the half-dozen making their first Cup start did so in some style, not least the galloping Jamie Heaslip and the excellent Kieran Lewis and Robert Kearney on the wings. Little need for reproach there.

"I thought they did enough really," reflected coach Michael Cheika, but he admitted Leinster's intensity dropped off in the first 20 minutes of the second half when they lost David Blaney to the sin-bin and a converted try. He also bemoaned Bath's tactic of slowing the game down.

"It was a good, physical contest. Our forwards have copped a lot of flak for not being able to play with aggression and passion, but I think they certainly stood up to the task tonight. But you can't get away from losing the lineouts we lost and some of the ball we dropped toward the end of the game. At that level you must take your opportunities and we didn't."

Cheika maintains they can win in Glasgow next Sunday, as they'll have to, adding defiantly: "It's going to be an even group and I can assure you that by no way are we counting ourselves out of it. We can go to the Rec and win, I'll tell you now." As they'll also probably have to.

His counterpart John Connolly said: "It was a satisfactory result but I don 't think we played particularly well. We started badly on the back of some poor kicking. We hung in there in the first half, played well in the first 20 of the second half but then became reactive rather than proactive."

Leinster could justifiably bear a major grievance, as most of the crowd did, at referee Nigel Whitehouse, a policeman by trade. While it would be tempting to suggest he shouldn't give up the day job, his often perplexing hand signals don't make the thought of him directing traffic in south Wales especially amusing.

In any event, just for starters, three crunch and erroneous decisions all went against Leinster. The worst, arguably, was the first after 36 minutes, with Leinster leading 13-6, when David Blaney was stiff-armed by his opposite number, Lee Mears. Shane Horgan, with a standard advantage play, kicked into the in-goal area, where Frikki Welsh easily won the touchdown. Mr Whitehouse, belatedly and amazingly, signalled a 22-metre drop-out in decreeing Leinster had used up an advantage for foul play where none had in truth accrued.

Calling Felipe Contepomi back for not taking a quick tap from the correct mark at 16-22 as the Puma was heading off for his second try was compounded in injury time by the failure to punish David Bory for his one-handed knockdown that prevented Brian O'Meara's try-scoring pass to Lewis.

Had Bath been mugged late on again in the eight added minutes, the crowd would have seen that as poetic justice given the number of time-outs their heavyweight and heavily puffing forwards were taking. It all added to the mounting frustration and desperation in home ranks during that end-game.

It's hard to be critical of Contepomi, given the performance Leinster's captain and best player had put in up until then, but much of the panic emanated from his three handling errors as he tried to force the pass.

Using the simple but effective ploy of the scrumhalf exchanging passes with the first receiver to bypass much of the close-in defence, Leinster worked countless overlaps but there was a lack of precision in the passing through the hands.

That said, debutant Jonny Hepworth never convinced, and you wondered what might have happened had Denis Hickie or Robert Kearney still been there - ditto Gary Brown, overlooked for the rugby league convert for this competition.

Though it goes against their grain, there was also a compelling argument for keeping their collective heads and someone dropping into the pocket, as Gordon D'Arcy did to no avail, in opting for an equalising drop-goal in that frenzied end-game.

It would only have earned them another point in the pool's scheme of things, but it would have halved Bath's four-point haul. They'll learn, but how costly was this lesson?

SCORING SEQUENCE: 3 mins: Contepomi drop goal 3-0; 12: Contepomi try and con 10-0; 17: Barkley pen 10-3; 19: Contepomi pen 13-3; 33: Barkley pen 13-6; 40+2: Barkley pen 13-9 (half-time 13-9); 46: Beattie try, Barkley con 13-16; 49: Contepomi pen 16-16; 67: Barkley pen 16-19; 71: Malone drop goal 16-22; 75: Contepomi pen 19-22.

LEINSTER: G Dempsey; K Lewis, G D'Arcy, S Horgan, R Kearney; F Contepomi (capt), B O'Riordan; R Corrigan, B Blaney, E Byrne; B Gissing, B Williams; C Potts, K Gleeson, J Heaslip. Replacements: B Jackman for Blaney, M O'Kelly for Gissing, B O'Meara for O'Riordan (all 58 mins), J Hepworth for Kearney (73 mins). Not used: R McCormack, D Dillon, E Hickey.

BATH RUGBY: L Best; F Welsh, T Cheeseman, O Barkley, D Bory; C Malone, M Wood; M Stevens, L Mears, D Bell; S Borthwick (capt), D Grewcock; A Beattie, J Scaysbrook, I Feaunati. Replacements: P Dixon for Mears, G Delve for Feaunati (both 75 mins), S Finau for Bory (77 mins). Not used: C Loader, J Hudson, N Walshe, R Davis.

Referee: Nigel Whitehouse (Wales).