Leinster emerge from Connacht scrap with clean bill of health and many positives

Leinster emerged from a relatively productive weekend with a win away to Connacht which returned them to second place in the Rabo Pro12 table while trimming Munster’s lead to three points. Just as satisfyingly, they also reported a clean bill of health approaching their decisive Heineken Cup pool games away to Castres next Sunday and at home to the Ospreys five days later.

Already denied the services of their primary source of go-forward ball in the shape of Seán O’Brien, that was imperative, and while they hardly set the world alight in eventually subduing a typically fired-up Connacht, Matt O’Connor believes his strong selection, which is likely mirror his European line-ups, will benefit from the blow-out after the Christmas hiatus.

“That was the thinking. Some of those guys have had two weeks off away from that rugby environment. There’s been a lot of distractions with the Ireland camp, Christmas and New Year. The thinking was to get a good week’s training and a good hit-out to set us up for next weekend.”

Luke Fitzgerald withdrew before the game due to illness but O'Connor said: "Luke trained all week and it's probably a 24-hour thing. Dave (Kearney) did the job well."

Two penalties
Leinster didn't hit the front until the 63rd minute through the first of two penalties by Jimmy Gopperth, before he subsequently converted Gordon D'Arcy's decisive try, and the way he steadied the ship after being introduced for Ian Madigan would seem to put the Kiwi in pole position to start at outhalf against Castres.

Noting that Connacht “were always going to be massively up for the game” perhaps tellingly O’Connor added: “From that end, we knew we had to be accurate. We kicked poorly in the first half. We didn’t kick it out when we had the luxury of the 22. And when we kicked contestable, they weren’t contestable and we invited them back into the game which was disappointing. By and large, we fixed that in the second half. We looked after the ball. We played in the right areas and we were pretty happy with the second half.”

A hard-earned, sleeves-rolled-up win on the road may not be the worst preparation for facing the reigning French champions. “You’d like to look at all the glitz and glamour of coming here and playing the style of rugby you like to play,” said O’Connor, “but talking to people who’ve been involved in Leinster for a long time, it never happens in Galway. We were realistic in relation to what we had to do to get a result. It won’t be too dissimilar to next week. It’s all about the four points, it’s all about getting the result this weekend and next.”

The preference for Jordi Murphy at openside, alongside Rhys Ruddock and Jamie Heaslip, looks like the best means of accumulatively atoning for O'Brien's loss, with Heaslip in particular being the game's most influential ball carrier.

'Close channels'
"I thought he carried really well in those close channels. It's something we're going to have to look at with Seán O'Brien gone. He was big in those channels and got us good forward momentum which was important. Jordi Murphy, Rhys Ruddock and Dominic Ryan all gave us a bit of that. So they're sharing the responsibility a little bit. They were all very good in that second half, there wasn't a bad performance. It was pretty tidy."

As with the Leinster’s 16-13 win over Connacht at the RDS in October, the game wasn’t without its controversies, notably George Clancy’s decision not to yellow-card Heaslip for a late hit on Dan Parks in the 65th minute. Needless to say the two coaches saw it differently. “No, nothing in it at all,” said O’Connor. “Parks was lying down, he was smiling the whole time. It was a minor incident.”

Pat Lam described the decision not to yellow-card Heaslip as “astonishing”, and said: “Well, I tell ya, I played for Samoa. We touch anyone around that area we get blasted. Absolutely blasted. It was pretty obvious. Everyone saw it. What determines a tackle, a shoulder charge, which was late?

“The officials saw it but I don’t need to comment on it. Whatever the crowd was, 7-8,000, they all saw it. You guys saw it.

“It was a surprising decision and then the one for them to go ahead with the call saying it went backwards,” he added in reference to what not too long ago would assuredly have been deemed a forward pass by Gopperth for D’Arcy’s try, not to mention the apparent knock-on by Heaslip in the build-up to Gopperth’s second penalty.

Whereas Connacht also emerged unscathed, Munster have the most anxious wait over the next day or so in advance of their game in Gloucester next Saturday, pending scans on the three players who departed injured in the first half of Friday’s defeat to Ulster in Ravenhill, namely Damien Varley (heel), Cathal Sheridan (knee) and Donncha O’Callaghan (knee). Whereas O’Callaghan walked away from the ground, and Sheridan was on crutches, Varley looks the most worrisome, given how he was helped off the pitch and left the ground on crutches.