Operation Twickenham is green for go

RUGBY:MOVE OVER Europe. Truly, this is Ireland's time in the Heineken Cup. After two all-French finals and one all-English, come Saturday May 19th in Twickenham, the Cup will runneth over with a first all-Irish final. All roads lead to London.

Hence, Ireland will provide the European champions for the fifth time in seven years and sixth time overall while, as a consequence, after their emotionally and highly charged debut campaign, Connacht will return to the competition again next season and a four-handed Irish entry.

All of this was ensured yesterday when, despite not being at their fluent best and hanging on by their fingernails at the death in a throbbing Stade Chaban Dalmas, Leinster came through possibly their most daunting test of character with a 19-15 win.

The holders, now seeking an unprecedented third cup in four years, will thereby play their northern neighbours from Ulster in the final after the 1999 winners’ victory over Edinburgh in the Aviva Stadium on Saturday.

“It’s a fantastic occasion for Ireland to have two finalists,” said a remarkably fresh-looking Brian O’Driscoll afterwards. “It’s brilliant, it really is. Yea, it should be good fun in camp tomorrow, there should be a little bit of banter floating around.”

This was in reference to, ironically, an Irish one-day camp in Carton House today comprising 38 players, with a significant chunk from Leinster and Ulster. It should be interesting alright.

Amid a deafening crescendo from well before kick-off right the way through until the near 30,000 bedecked in ‘Les Jaunards’ colours gave way to stunned silence and then a wall of booing for referee Wayne Barnes. It made for a beautiful sound, and soon it in turn gave way to the 3,000 or so Leinster fans who were left singing in the sun.

Leinster had looked marginally the more potent side but trailed 12-6 at the break, having struggled to secure ball off their own lineout (they lost five in all) and with their scrum in trouble, before turning the game on its head when man of the match Rob Kearney created a try for Cian Healy before landing a stunning drop goal.

But, leading 19-15, first a Jonny Sexton penalty was adjudged to have fractionally missed after recourse to the TMO and then in the 79th minute the TMO decreed, correctly, that Wesley Fofana had lost control of the ball when reaching out for the line as he was tackled by Gordon D’Arcy.

Joe Schmidt vacated his seat adjacent to the press box at that juncture and asked what he was thinking as Clermont threw the proverbial kitchen sink at his team in that furious finale, the Leinster coach said: “Please lads keep throwing yourself in front of the bus. That was pretty much that, that’s all we could do. We really had to take the space underneath so they couldn’t get ball down and get forward. I thought the lads did it superbly. We can take great pride in the fact we did that.”

As for the way the squad regrouped at half-time, Schmidt joked that “Jonny Sexton spoke of course and called the play we did just after half-time,” in reference to the crucial try by Healy. “Anyone who doubted him at half-time was fully in agreement when he knocked over the conversion to give us a one-point lead.”

Just as pertinently, Schmidt admitted that much of the focus had been rectifying their set-piece problems so as to ensure they had some ball to play with, “because we felt that with good quality ball we could put them under pressure, as we had in the first 10-15 minutes.”

Shane Jennings expressed the view that the players had been somewhat disappointed by their performance and that they had let Clermont come so close to denying them a place in the final.

“Part of the reason for that was the quality of pressure put on us,” admitted Schmidt. ‘They made it very clear they weren’t going to allow us to play the way we wanted to.”

By the time Schmidt attended the post-match press conference, he had already received a text from his Ulster counterpart Brian McLaughlin.

“Hopefully we’ll share a drink at the end of the final,” said Schmidt. “I’m just delighted I’m going to the final as a coach and not as a pretty disappointed spectator.”

For his part, McLaughlin was pretty impressed. “I thought Leinster were superb,” he said from Belfast.

“It was a tremendous defensive performance after they fought back to go ahead. But we know what to expect from Leinster. But hey, it’s a final and anything can happen.”

It surely can, and it probably will.