Lacklustre Leinster in need of another string to their bow

The debate rages, amongst Leinster supporters and pundits and former players alike, as to the brand of rugby being played by the province under Matt O'Connor's watch, and even O'Connor became embroiled in it last week when declaring "the aesthetics of it are largely irrelevant". But if results were paramount, then the 24-18 defeat to Harlequins has piled the pressure on O'Connor and Leinster this evening.

Coming after the round two win in Castres, this was the second tryless performance in the European Champions Cup in a row, and also came a week after the tryless win over an under- strength Ospreys. And that performance in Castres, who have slumped to last place in the Top 14, had echoes of the quarter-final defeat in Toulon last season, when Leinster had prioritised discipline, set-piece efficiency and a relative risk-free approach.

Analysis

The province’s former wingers,

Denis Hickie

and

Shane Horgan

, are reluctant to be too critical of their former province, not least as they are removed from the fray now, and Hickie begins his analysis of where Leinster are at the moment by stressing that they “are still playing with the required intensity to be in the knock-out stages of the Champions Cup.”

“I think where they’re struggling at the moment is in breaking down teams in the early phases. I know that’s increasingly difficult in rugby now, to attack from first phase, but I think the areas they are trying to attack in doesn’t necessarily lend itself to doing that. They attack fairly close in as a starting point as opposed to going wide as a starting point.”

That said Hickie believes Leinster are “not far away from the levels of accuracy they need to generate the quick multi- phase ball that they thrive under.” He also makes allowance for the litany of injuries which have bedevilled them since the start of the season.

Like many capital city clubs, Leinster are expected to play with a certain style as well. That doesn’t bother Horgan, but what does concern him is whether the brand of rugby being played by Leinster gives them a shot at winning the European Champions Cup.

“The style of play you want to play is the style that wins you rugby matches and wins you competitions. As a player, that’s what you’d want. Okay, if all things were even, you’d like to play stylish rugby. But what is of concern, is that if Leinster don’t play a smarter type of rugby they won’t have the level of success they’ve had. Because of the talent of players they might have enough to win the Pro12. But they won’t win Europe playing the same way as Saracens play or Leicester play or as the big French teams play.”

“They’re better at it and ultimately the only teams who win that way are the powerful French teams, and that’s been the case for the last number of years.

What I’d be concerned about is that the type of game that we’re seeing at the moment doesn’t allow Leinster to compete with the biggest teamsin Europe. Because I just don’t think Leinster have the bulk, and those clubs have greater resources than the Leinster teams.”

Out-muscled

Horgan points out that Saracens have never won the

Heineken Cup

, and that their brand of rugby invariably comes up short against a French team who can’t be out- muscled. Nor have Leicester conquered Europe since 2001. Indeed the only Premiership team to lift the trophy in the intervening dozen seasons have been Wasps in 2004 and ‘07, since when no Premiership team has won the Cup. The only other sides to prevent the French heavyweights monopolising the competition have been Irish sides, who outsmarted rather than out-muscled their opponents.

“What is the best way for Leinster to win? I think that’s to go after teams with a little bit more ambition than they have at the moment,” says Horgan. “As we saw last season against Toulon (in the quarter-finals) it’s not going to be enough just to try really low-risk, low-error rugby. Now, you have to play low error rugby, but you do have to take a certain amount of risks and play a more ambitious game, and you have to have a high skill level and trust your skill level to do that, and then you have to have confidence in the game plan.”

Hickie concurs. “That has always been the case and even more so now. You need to have more dimensions to your game; that horrible cliche, you need to have more strings to your bow, when you play in Europe, and certainly as you progress in a tournament. It’s like playing with a deck of cards. In some games you need to be playing some cards but you have to have the other ones in case you need to play them as the competition goes on.”

“I think that’s a problem a lot of the Irish teams have been finding, not just Leinster, and I would have serious question marks over the (Pro12) League as a result. You can grind away wins and Leinster’s base line performance will always be enough to progress in the Pro12, even if they don’t have an on-day.”

Handling skills

Perhaps not unrelated to this, Leinster’s handling skills appear to have deteriorated in the last two seasons; witness the four turnovers in wide channels last Sunday. “Yea, the skill levels have dropped. There are just too many passes hitting the inside shoulder,” says Horgan. “That for me is always an indication as to whether a team is really hitting their straps, if the ball is in front and they’re not forced to stop.”

"So that's an issue and I also think they're struggling with a "10" [Jimmy Gopperth] who doesn't attack the line and pass. He does attack the line himself and he is a threat when he wants to be a threat, but then everybody knows that he's the threat. Maybe he'll get an offload or maybe he'll shovel one of those short passes out to someone who might burst through. That's a low percentage play. It's hard on Jimmy Gopperth to be comparing him to Johnny Sexton – but just look at what Sexton does; always forward momentum and always a threat but always capable of picking one or probably three passes."

“Now, there’s not a handful of “10s” who can do what Sexton does to the level he does it at, and I’m not expecting that from the Leinster “10” at the moment. But what you do have to do is be able to take the ball forward, to some degree stay positive, and actually pull the ball back, so you hold someone on the inside and you can still move the ball to your backline. You don’t have to be able to pick every single pass which Sexton seems to have the ability to do, but you certainly have to be a threat and pass. That can’t be exclusive.”

In his pre-match analysis on BT last Sunday, Brian O’Driscoll highlighted how Gopperth has a tendency to play very deeply, although at half-time he was quick to praise the Kiwi for the way he took the ball to the gain line and create line breaks. Indeed, in the first-half Gopperth was the creator in chief for three of Leinster’s five line breaks in the match. The pity was that he reverted to playing very deep in the second half.

O’Driscoll has since also highlighted how Gopperth’s tracking of Aseli Tikoirotuma prevented Harlequins’ winger from rounding the posts when completing his intercept try, which led to Tim Swiel missing the conversion and thus Leinster got a losing bonus point which could yet prove crucial.

Belief in O’Connor

Interestingly, the players speak virtually as one about their belief in O’Connor and the game they are striving to play, while insistent that they are not that far from clicking.

“The players seem to be quite happy,” notes Hickie. “There are no noises coming out of the camp that they’re not happy. If the players weren’t happy you’d know about it. And I don’t think it’s blind loyalty. There are enough experienced guys there to go ‘we need to do something different.”

Horgan says: “I’ve been in teams where things haven’t been going well and I’ve been thinking ‘this isn’t right. This is a disaster. This guy has to go or I don’t believe in what he’s doing. I don’t like his philosophy. It’s not us.’ And then I’ve been in teams that have been losing and I’ve gone ‘we’re 100 per cent right here. We’re on the right track here. This is about to turn. We can see it.’”

“The greatest example of that is when we were getting absolutely lambasted in 2008- 2009,” says Horgan, in reference to the pool campaign which featured defeats to Castres and Wasps before a laboured 12-3 win at home to Edinburgh. This earned a quarter- final trek to the Stoop which Leinster won 6-5, and led to the benchmark semi-final win over Munster.

“The squad was never as together. It was remarkable actually. From the outside it wasn’t looking good at all, but on the inside we felt we were on a positive curve. Now, if that’s the case with Leinster, there’s nothing to stress about. If the people aren’t feeling that, and they’re starting to look around, and go “actually what we’re doing here isn’t the right philosophy’ or the players who are there now don’t see it that way, that could be an issue.”

Springboard

The return to the Stoop for the first time since that bloodstained quarter-final was not to be a similar springboard, but maybe the return fixture tonight against the same opponents can be.

Nor were Gopperth and those outside him helped by Eoin Reddan’s strangely out- of-sorts performance. Aside from being more error-prone than usual, even his normally excellent passing was sluggish. “I don’t know what the inside story was, but something didn’t appear right there,” says Horgan. “His first three or four passes were really loopy. That’s really unusual for ‘Redser’.”

“That’s why there’s a capacity for a big jump, because Redser won’t play like that again. I don’t think that will happen to the scrum again. The lineout will probably get a bit better. Leinster should beat Harlequins at home.” Hickie concurs although of course, and all the more so with Chris Robshaw and Nick Evans ruled out, O’Connor and Leinster are on something of a hiding to nothing here, for even if they do put Harlequins to the sword, this debate is sure to rage.