Leinster’s tenacious tackling took the sting out of Wasps

"A captain’s night", said Leinster coach Matt O’Connor of his number eight Jamie Heaslip after Sunday’s victory over Wasps.

A team shorn of Sean O’Brien and Cian Healy requires others to share the carrying load and Heaslip had a powerful game with 23 carries and 14 tackles, ably assisted by his back row colleagues Rhys Ruddock and Dominic Ryan who chipped in with 14 and 12 carries respectively.

Leinster’s 25-20 win at the RDS was an end-to-end affair with plenty of hard running. Both teams carried for 479 metres, beat 27 defenders and, on the debit side, had 27 missed tackles. Leinster’s 27 misses, however, came from just 136 attempts (Wasps had a massive 209) for an 80% tackle rate — simply not good enough at this level. Michael Bent’s solid performance in the scrum was let down somewhat by his three tackle misses that resulted in a Wasps line break apiece. When meeting the press after the game Heaslip said that Leinster had some improvement to make at the set piece. The lineout was certainly creaky; Sean Cronin had two crooked throws and one thrown clean over the top, remarkable given that his target had been the light tower that is Devin Toner.