Lament for Leinster as extra-time efforts amount to nothing

Toulon 25 Leinster 20 (aet; 12-12 after 80 minutes)

True to their word, Leinster fought the good fight. For 80 minutes of regulation time and another 20 of extra time in a taut, error-strewn, rain-sodden, titanic struggle, they went toe-to-toe with the back-to-back champions and came within inches of arguably their best European win, only to leave Marseille with a host of laments. This was the one that got away.

Jimmy Gopperth came within a whisker of winning it two minutes from the end of normal time with a missed drop goal and then, sensing blood with Ali Williams sin-binned as Toulon's array of secondrows added to their costly rap sheet, Leinster overplayed their hand. With the help of a Bryan Habana intercept try, Toulon won that first 10 minutes 13-3 and, to raucous relief from the vast majority of the 35,116 crowd in the steepling Stade Vélodrome, emerged 25-20 winners.

And so this hastily re-organised tournament, with its knockout stages compressed into a six-week post-Six Nations window, with each of the final three rounds a mere fortnight apart, will have two weeks to sell an all-French final in London with ticket sales barely above 30,000. Toulon will meet Clermont Auvergne at Twickenham on Saturday week, May 2nd (kick-off 5pm), in a reprise of their final two seasons ago in the Aviva when the better team, Clermont, lost in front of a sell-out 50,000-plus crowd.

Quality

As Matt O’Connor has always insisted, whatever about the quality of performances, there’s been little wrong with Leinster’s effort of late, and afterwards he said: “The overriding emotion is probably pride, really. The effort the lads put in across the course of it was fantastic and it’s incredibly disappointing to come second.”

Reflecting on how this one got away, O’Connor said: “We were probably inaccurate at key moments in the second half. I thought we dominated for large periods, put them under pressure and made that tell on the scoreboard. We led for large parts of it and were probably the better side for large parts of it, but we came second in extra time and that determined the result.”

Although Ian Madigan’s place-kicking was again virtually immaculate – nailing five penalties from six including two cracking efforts to take the game into extra time after hitting the post with his one wayward attempt – it was his long skip pass to a three-on-one overlap out wide which Habana picked off with virtually the last play of the first period of extra time.

‘Absolute hero’

“It’s potentially a 14-point play,” said O’Connor. “If we play outside Habana and score at the other end we win the game, Ian’s an absolute hero. That’s the nature of the game and the margins are tiny at this level. There were probably seven or eight decisions from us, from the officials, that had the potential to change the game. It’s always going to be that tight at this level.”

The rain teemed down from over an hour before kick-off, making the short-cropped soccer pitch at this redeveloped stadium very slippery and ensuring some keystone cops-like exchanges as the ball soon resembled the proverbial bar of soap.

With Wayne Barnes typically strict on tackled players not releasing the ball, it made building through the phases well-nigh impossible and made it doubly risky to run the ball, particularly in your own half. And so both teams repeatedly took to the air. But Barnes, it has to be said, was clear, consistent, generally sharp and fair.

The bedrock of Leinster's performance was a much-improved defence, which made 100 tackles and missed only eight. Improving their line speed after a worrying start, they consistently made their first-up tackles, with Seán O'Brien, Jamie Heaslip and Jordi Murphy typifying their enormous work-rate.

Of huge significance too was the way Mike Ross and company recovered from a couple of ominous early scrums to not only gain a foothold but win a couple of penalties. The introduction of Jack McGrath and Marty Moore added to their scrum strength, although here, as elsewhere, the confrontation ebbed erratically.

Jamie Heaslip commented: “We stood our ground and it felt like a boxing match, a slug fest out there – sides punishing each other for making mistakes. Especially when you got down into each other’s half, there was a lot of pressure on both sides of the ball and it just showed, there was nothing between the sides. But at this level you make mistakes and a team like them with the quality players they have, they will punish you.”

Thanks to the tournament organisers Leinster now have a five-day turnaround before facing Ulster away as they seek to somehow make up an eight-point leeway on the top four in the Guinness Pro12 and so also avoid the more difficult draw for next season’s European Cup which would come with a fifth-placed finish and a lower seeding.

“The group talked quickly afterwards about having that confidence going forward,” said Heaslip. “We have got a massive challenge in the Pro12, a quick turnaround on the back of this, and we knew we had to produce some of our best rugby and do all the people that travelled down here, all the people that watched at home and the squad members that weren’t here today, do all those people proud and hopefully we did today through our efforts and our actions.”

Tricky

For O’Connor and co, it will be tricky to manage their resources. “We’ll go back to Dublin and regroup, see how the bodies are,” said O’Connor. “We’ve got to get three wins in the league to get ourselves any chance and hope other results go our way. From that perspective, we’ll regroup and dust ourselves off and have a look at the challenge of the next three games.”