Strong second half helps Leinster topple the champions

Leinster 24 Connacht 13

At Murrayfield in May, an exuberant Connacht made the pitch look big. Leinster couldn’t plug the gaps. At the RDS on Saturday, Leinster made the pitch look small.

Connacht couldn’t find any daylight.

For much of an absorbing reprise of last season’s final, this was a contest between Connacht’s attack and Leinster’s defence, and ultimately, as the man of the match Dan Leavy said afterwards, they strangled the life out of Connacht’s running game.

Leinster had learned their lessons from the Pro12 beating handed out to them by Connacht when they felt they'd sat back too much. Here, their line speed in defence was altogether more aggressive, forcing Connacht back, and their tackle execution was excellent. Double figures Joey Carbery, Noel Reid and Leavy were all in double figures, while the locks put in big shifts, and all of this enabled Leavy, Sean O'Brien and Cian Healy to manoeuvre themselves over the ball as they do so well by slowing down ball and winning turnovers or penalties.

Stuart Lancaster’s imprint was again evident. At the back, Isa Nacewa covered a vast amount of ground superbly, covering on the turn to save potentially three tries and, to boot, landed five from six kicks.

“They guys worked hard this week,” said Leo Cullen. “I thought we were a bit guilty early on of almost working too hard, overcommitting to the rucks and getting sucked in and narrow, because Connacht are good at keeping width in attack.

“We made some adjustments midway through the first half and we looked a bit more comfortable after that. Some of the coaches were raging with the try we conceded at the end but I suppose it gives us something to work on.”

Connacht were initially the more dangerous side and full value for their early 6-0 lead.

With Leinster’s wingers pushing up, Jack Carty varied their game by going to the air to find the space at the back, and their inventive running game created pressure and chances.

Yet by half-time, despite Connacht having had almost 60 per cent of both possession and territory, (and ultimately making nine line breaks to five), they trailed 9-6. Leinster even won the ten minutes when they were reduced to 14 players by Sean O’Brien’s sin-binning by 6-0.

Unlike last May, Connacht’s handling and execution let them down. At times, their offloading clicked but when Jack Carty broke his offload eluded Dave Heffernan, as did Peter Robb’s to Bundee Aki. Attacking off a lineout against 14 men, they launched Aki up the middle, but Heffernan opted to go himself and after Ian Nagle’s tackle, Leavy ripped the ball from him.

Adam Byrne’s man-and-ball tackle on Heffernan from Aki’s pass, with Jake Heenan and Cian Kelleher on the overlap was critical, as was Quinn Roux’s fumble close to the line with the last play of the first half after try-saving tackles by Jack Conan and Noel Reid on Noel Marmion and Jack Carty.

The penalty count was 10-7 in Leinster’s favour, and the game flipped early in the second-half when Carty’s cross kick to Kelleher was fractionally overcooked and John Lacey bizarrely penalised Roux after what he deemed was a “fair contest” in claiming Sean Cronin’s throw from Nagle. If anything, it should have been the other way around.

Leinster’s attack came to life when Conan supported Adam Byrne’s break up the middle, and after Carbery ran hard off the resulting five metre scrum, Byrne scored off Cronin’s wobbly pass to the deck, which also looked forward.

As Pat Lam admitted, Connacht's heads dipped. They started playing catch-up from deep, forcing passes and making more mistakes, as Leinster's defence kept enveloping them. Come into the parlour said the spider to the fly. A try for their other winger, Barry Daly, on his full competitive debut rendered Shane Delahunt's last minute try minimal consolation for the champions. Best spell Connacht's best spell was while Craig Ronaldson was on the pitch, but even though Aki had his right calf heavily strapped after being unable to train for the past two weeks, Lam was not attributing any of their difficulties to losing their inside centre cum goalkicker.

“We are more disappointed collectively as a group that we made too many uncharacteristic errors, and we know that they punished us,” said Lam..

He took some solace from the way his team transitioned from attack to defence if less so the amount of turnovers that caused this to happen. “A lot of it was our own error and collectively we have to take responsibility for that.”

Leinster’s midfield, buttressed by Leavy, successfully stymied Aki at source.

“Today we got caught out by our own mistakes,” said Lam.

“We’ve faced that sort of ‘D’; Toulouse came flying up at us as well. But it just comes back to our own execution, our game is really based about being able to look after the ball and keep putting the pressure on that way and at times we showed flashes of it, but once we turned the ball over it releases pressure on the other team . . .”

Scoring sequence: 5 mins Ronaldson pen 0-3; 14 mins Ronaldson pen 0-6; 24 mins Nacewa pen 3-6; 33 mins Nacewa pen 6-6; 38 mins Nacewa pen 9-6; (half-time 9-6); 50 mins Byrne try 14-6; 59 mins Nacewa pen 17-6; 76 mins Daly try, Nacewa con 24-6; 80 mins Delahunt try, Carty con 24-13.

Leinster: Isa Nacewa (capt); Adam Byrne, Rory O'Loughlin, Noel Reid, Barry Daly; Joey Carbery, Jamison Gibson Park; Cian Healy, Sean Cronin, Mike Ross, Mick Kearney, Ian Nagle, Dan Leavy, Sean O'Brien, Jack Conan.

Replacements: Mike McCarthy for Kearney (46 mins), James Tracy for Cronin, Peter Dooley for Healy, Michael Bent for Ross (all 60 mins),

Rob Kearney for O’Loughlin (64 mins), Josh van der Flier for O’Brienb (67 mins), Ross Byrne for A Byrne (78 mins). Not used _ Luke McGrath. Sinbinned _ O’Brien (29-39 mins).

Connacht: Tiernan O'Halloran; Niyi Adeolokun, Peter Robb, Craig Ronaldson, Cian Kelleher; Jack Carty, Kieran Marmion; JP Cooney, Dave Heffernan, Conor Carey, Quinn Roux, Andrew Browne, Sean O'Brien, Jake Heenan, John Muldoon (capt). Replacements: Bundee Aki for Ronadlson (19 mins), Finlay Bealham for JP Cooney (38 mins), Eoin McKeon for O'Brien, Dominic Robertson-McCoy for Carey (both 54 mins), Shane Delahunt for Heffernan, James Cannon for Roux (both 60 mins), Stacey Ili for Kelleher (70 mins), Caolin Blade for Marm ion (78 mins). Sinbinned _ Robb (38-48 mins).

Referee: John Lacey (Ireland)