Focused Toulouse get the balance right

HEINEKEN CUP SEMI-FINAL/Toulouse 26 Leinster 16:THE OCCASION demanded it and so it proved. Toulouse turned up with their A game, whereas Leinster could only manage a B-plus. Few teams would have lived with the rouge et noir in this imperious and fully focused form, and there was no shame in this defeat for Leinster. Fate just dealt them a bad hand.

If it was bad enough being drawn away to Toulouse, even the unseasonal, monsoon-like rain in the hours before kick-off worked against the holders.

With the grass a little long and though hard underneath, on such a slippery surface any edge in the scrums, especially, and mauls, becomes magnified. If a team is in retreat they have less traction, and no matter how much Leinster shuffled their front-row resources the damage wreaked by the Toulouse scrum was almost seismic.

Leinster’s tight five regularly went into conclave but couldn’t address the problem. Cian Healy was given a particularly torrid time by Benoit Lecouls.

Admittedly, Stan Wright didn’t fare much better after the first-half introduction of CJ van der Linde and it did seem as if Lecouls was boring in illegally at times. In the circumstances, the work-rate of Wright and John Fogarty was immense, and ditto Eoin Reddan, whose alert covering saved two tries.

Perhaps there was an argument for bringing on Mike Ross sooner, for it wasn’t as if van der Linde was doing heaps around the pitch either. By the time their all-Irish front-row actually steadied the last two scrums of the game, it was perhaps as misleading as it was immaterial given Yves Montes had replaced Daan Human.

By then too, the Toulouse demolition job had yielded two of David Skrela’s three first-half three-pointers and the insurance kick 10 minutes from time. Leinster were also outmuscled at the breakdown, where Nigel Owens was inconsistent in allowing players to come in from the side or go off their feet.

Toulouse’s line speed was sharper in defence, with their hits meaner and harder.

Here Thierry Dusautoir led from the front in his own inimitable way.

Even with the game almost up he was emptying Healy in the tackle. Built like an out-house, Dusautoir is almost freakishly destructive.

This was a carefully worked out and intelligently applied performance by Toulouse. They didn’t play too much rugby early on, and their physicality set the tone. They were content to rack up three-pointers before unleashing their sickeningly strong bench and, as is their wont, cranking up the intensity with two converted tries inside seven minutes by the hour mark.

They had the two most dangerous runners on the pitch in Yannick Jauzion and Clement Poitrenaud, a superbly balanced runner now at the peak of his powers, and the clever way they used them was exemplified in the build-up and execution of their 54th minute breakthrough try following successive off-the-top lineout takes by Patricio Albacete.

From the first, Jauzion (hitherto relatively quiet) ran hard, straight and flat onto the ball to pierce the blue line and find Maxime Medard in support only for the offload to be harshly called forward.

A minute later, again going left to right, Jauzion ran the same line, drawing blue defenders like a magnet, but as a decoy for Florian Fritz to instead take David Skrela’s skip pass and find Poitrenaud on the outside.

Clerc switched inside and passed off the floor to Fritz, and a couple of recycles later there was Jauzion to break Leo Cullen’s tackle and score. Aside from being ultra-physical and gifted, they are also very smart footballers.

Leinster also applied clever tactics and were a little unlucky that their accurate, crossfield aerial bombardment – with Shane Horgan a menace to Cedric Heyman – didn’t reap more reward. Shaun Berne executed this and much else well, while Rob Kearney was imperious in the air.

They had plenty of territory but had little return, especially from Owens and most notably when Albacete clearly spoiled Eoin Reddan at the base from an offside position, while Reddan was inches from scoring only to be denied by Byron Kelleher and Vincent Clerc.

Even so, when Shane Jennings brilliantly tackled William Servat for Berne to trim Toulouse’s lead to 9-6 at the break with the last kick of the half, and then Kearney landed a 50-metre penalty soon after the resumption, it seemed the force was with the away side.

When Jamie Heaslip tackled Sowerby into touch for an attacking line-out, they were undone by Owens harshly penalizing Cullen for obstruction.

The momentum swung again, all the more so after the outstanding Jennings was forced off a minute before the Toulouse double whammy.

For the second, his replacement, Stephen Keogh missed Clerc up the middle and from the recycle Leinster shot up a little too quickly for Skrela to step off his inside foot between Gordon D’Arcy and Isa Nacewa and sprint in under the posts.

That wasn’t in the script. To their credit, Leinster responded with a superbly worked try. Heaslip initiated it with a sliding gather and pass off the deck infield to Berne and after D’Arcy gathered Brian O’Driscoll’s crossfield dink infield, Reddan took a stunning line.

He was collared just short by Poitrenaud, but a couple of recycles later there was Heaslip to take Isa Nacewa’s skip pass and also finish off the move.

Leinster were back in the game, albeit briefly, before the Toulouse scrum cranked things up some more. A high-quality game between two quality sides in which the better team won.

Sometimes it’s just that simple.

Scoring sequence: 5 mins Skrela pen 3-0; 16 mins Skrela pen 6-0; 31 mins Skrela pen 9-0; 33 mins Berne pen 9-3; 40 (+2 mins) Berne pen 9-6; (half-time 9-6); 43 mins Kearney pen 9-9; 54 mins Jauzion try, Skrela con 16-6; 60 mins Skrela try and con 23-9; 65 mins Heaslip try, Berne con 23-16; 71 mins Skrela pen 26-16.

TOULOUSE: C Poitrenaud; V Clerc, F Fritz, Y Jauzion, C Heymans; D Skrela, B Kelleher; D Human, W Servat, B Lecouls, R Millo-Chluski, P Albacete, J Bouilhou, T Dusautoir (capt), S Sowerby.

Replacements: M Medard for Heymans (half-time), J-B Poux for Lecouls (44 mins), Y Maestri for Millo-Chluski (56 mins), Y Montes for Human, L Picamoles for Sowerby (both 72 mins), V Lacombe for Servat (75 mins). Not used: Y David.

LEINSTER: R Kearney; S Horgan, B ODriscoll, G DArcy, I Nacewa; S Berne, E Reddan; C Healy, J Fogarty, S Wright, L Cullen (capt), N Hines, K McLaughlin, S Jennings, J Heaslip.

Replacements: CJ Van Der Linde for Human (31 mins), S Keogh for Jennings (53 mins), M OKelly for Bouilhou (67 mins), M Ross for van der Linde (75 mins). Not used: B Jackman, P ODonohoe, E OMalley, G Dempsey.

Referee: Nigel Owens (Wales).