Jury wishes to call Williams to the bench

On Rugby/Gerry Thornley: However frustrated or angry Leinster and Irish supporters feel about the summary and deflating ending to the representative season in Ireland over the weekend, it will be nothing compared to how the Leinster management and players feel.

Lest we forget, it has been Leinster's best season in Europe. It's just the season finale was set up for the best day of all, or at any rate it was set up for Leinster to be there.

What will hurt is that Leinster cannot console themselves with the notion they were beaten by a better team. They were as much authors of their own downfall, before and during the game. The debate will rage as to whether the pressure of favouritism and expectancy weighed them down or whether they were over-confident, but they didn't seem as physically fired up or mentally as strong as they should have been.

They had been mightily peeved at the media reaction afforded Munster for their quarter-final win at Welford Road, and the comparatively less eulogistic response to their own win over Biarritz. Maybe they bought a little too much into their own self-assessment of that quarter-final performance. However, it seems utterly incredible that they might have been complacent for a European Cup semi-final.

Granted, there did seem an unwillingness to make the hard yards, or to utilise the first-half wind by kicking to the corners more, playing more territory and making Perpignan feel like the away team. But, aside from some midfield rumbling by Alan Quinlan, Leinster sought penetration through Christian Warner and Brian O'Driscoll to either break the tackle or play the ball out of the tackle.

Only with Aidan McCullen's belated introduction did the Leinster pack succeed in making some hard yards and allow the backs to attack the ball with more depth. Given McCullen has been the find of the season and has made a big impact every time he has come in, should he have been brought on sooner than the 67th minute? Ditto Nathan Spooner and Brian O'Riordan? Might Spooner even have been playing from the start?

The weekend's semi-finals will be remembered as much for the impact (or lack of) from the respective replacements' bench as anything else. Guy Noves had more resources at his disposal than the other semi-finalists which, given this was Ireland's two strongest teams, constituted a salutary eye-opener. But when things weren't going Toulouse's way Noves didn't hesitate to use them.

The game-changing introduction of Jean-Baptiste Elissalde, with Frederic Michalak switching to outhalf, occurred in the 53rd minute. Cedric Heymans, more willing to look for the ball than Emile Ntamack and a key contributor to the match-winning try in the 73rd minute, had been brought in prior to the hour mark - a full 15 minutes before that score. Noves had also made two changes to his front row by that point. They were proactive replacements. Coaches can talk about the notion of modern rugby being a 22-man game, but Noves's philosophy makes it clear he does more than give this notion lip service.

"Tactical replacements are an integral part of rugby today," he said afterwards. "The 15 who start are not necessarily better players than those on the bench. The players who came in were just as important in the victory today and the best compensation Munster can have is that it took 22 players to beat them."

The problem for Munster, of course, was that they lacked impact replacements, and Leinster were only marginally better off. Yet no less than McCullen, Spooner wasn't introduced until the 67th minute, and only because Brian O'Driscoll could no longer play on one leg. Spooner's introduction was a little ironic given he was arguably kept on too long with an injury in the quarter-final defeat last year at Welford Road.

Even then, O'Meara was kept on for another seven minutes, until the 74th minute. His two-from-seven ratio had long since eaten into his game. It was his knock-on from a tap penalty at 11-6 which led to Perpignan gaining the field position from which they drew level; and his missed pass to Spooner which led to Perpignan going in front at 14-11. Had Spooner played from the start, or been introduced sooner, the place-kicking load on O'Meara might have been lessened and his performance mightn't have suffered so much. But long before the 74th minute the argument for bringing O'Riordan on was compelling.

And there had been plenty of warning shots. True, O'Meara's goalkicking in the two Montferrand games had been on the money, but overall his strike rate of 56 per cent had been undermined by three sub-50 per cent games in a row against Swansea, Bristol and Biarritz.

All coaches - even excellent coaches like Matt Williams - have their blind spots. And there's been a hint of stubbornness about his preference for Warner - whom he hailed as Leinster's best player on Sunday - over Spooner in the face of media debate. There is also a concern within the Leinster think tank regarding Spooner's physicality, especially his tackling, all the more so after his shoulder reconstruction. But he's a proven goal-kicker, with excellent distribution who was a match winner as a late sub away to Montferrand in December, and there are ways of protecting a defensively suspect outhalf.

Privately even Williams must be wondering about the wisdom of not starting Spooner, or not making changes from the bench sooner. The feeling is that had Leinster been in the right frame of mind, had they made the hard yards, applied more of a kicking game, and had they a goalkicker, they could have negotiated this quarter-final by a couple of scores or more.

But then, they'll know that better than anyone.