Startled Lions up for Sale

IF you had to bet your house on the likely winner of Heineken Cup Pool 3 before last weekend, it would have been difficult to see beyond Leinster.

In a group with struggling Cardiff, unpredictable Biarritz and middle-of-the road Sale, a side with 12 international players and nine points on the board looked by far the safest option for your bricks and mortar.

Sale’s single-point victory at Lansdowne Road last weekend has changed all - instead of a cakewalk to the quarter-finals of the competition, Leinster now have a couple of minefields to negotiate. On January 31 they face a crucial tie against Biarritz in the South of France, but in order for that game to have any significance, they need to beat Sale tomorrow afternoon at Edgeley Park.

An eminently winnable tie a couple of weeks ago, last week’s surprisingly purposeful performance from the English side in Dublin has suddenly thrown the game into a different light. However with Sale now having shown everyone exactly what they are capable of, perhaps Leinster won’t look so startled this time.

“I think they did surprise us, perhaps we underestimated them slightly, but I think we were more off on our own game than anything else,” says Leinster’s international open-side Keith Gleeson.

“All season long our set-piece has been essentially second to none and Sale came out early and disrupted our line-outs which just meant we never really got into the game in the first half.

“But we were warned that they had the best line-out in Premiership and unfortunately we didn’t quite take that on board. This weekend we’re certainly under no illusions but I still think we’ve got enough quality players to be confident enough to go to Edgeley Park and win.”

Despite the quality of Sale’s performance, there’s no doubt that Leinster could still have won if they had a player in their ranks capable of booting the ball to touch. Twice in the last five minutes, two points to the good, the province had opportunities to push Sale fifty yards backwards, but on both occasions dawdled on the ball with the end result being possession for the English side and a match-winning drop-goal from Charlie Hodgson.

It was frustrating to watch, on the pitch it must have been unbearable.

“It was frustrating,” admits Gleeson, “but there’s always going to be frustrations. The team as a whole didn’t play well last weekend, I wouldn’t put it down to any one or two individuals. The forwards weren’t up to their usual set-piece game, and so we weren’t giving quality balls to the backs.

“The backs made errors but you can quite rightly point your finger at the forwards as well and say we didn’t do enough. It would have been nice to have Contepomi simply because we’re starting to run out of backs at the moment, but that’s life, things happen and you’ve got to deal with them.”

Brian O’Driscoll will miss tomorrow’s clash with a hamstring injury, but Gleeson firmly believes Leinster can still collect four points.

Gaining a quality stream of possession from set-pieces will be Gary Ella’s side’s first aim tomorrow and after that, the flanker is confident the rest will follow.

“We try and keep the ball in hand when we’re in possession, wear the opposition out and then turn the screw,” says the 27-year-old. “And we have the players to do exactly that once we have the ball. Of course we’re going to miss Brian, you take Brian out of any team and it hurts you.

“Having said that I’m quite excited about having Gordon D’Arcy in the centre, he’s a very talented player and it will be very interesting to see what he can do.”