Pecleir penalty breaks heroic Leinster hearts

IT’S not often Leinster put in a performance that makes the neutral feel sorry they fell short, but that was the aftertaste following their heart-breaking loss at the Stade Pierre Rajon on Saturday.

It was as brave and heroic an effort as we’ve ever seen from Leinster in the Heineken Cup, particularly in the second-half. Just after the interval, following David Vendetti’s breakaway try, the visitors founds themselves 27-13 in arrears. To make matters worse, Eric Miller was in the sin-bin but what happened over the next 14 minutes truly was fairytale stuff.

Inspired by the Felipe Contepomi, Gordon D’Arcy and Robert Kearney, Leinster scored two tries in the space of just three minutes and when the out-half landed a 45-yard penalty, his side were ahead, 28-27.

Then came the heartbreak as Alexandre Peclier landed a penalty in the third minute of injury time to steal the victory for the home side, who had contributed hugely to a thrilling game. The Leinster heads went down in unison and only those with stone hearts, or indeed Munster ones, wouldn’t have felt sorry for them.

“That’s a tough one to take,” said coach Michael Cheika afterwards. “We did so well to come back from the 14 point deficit in the beginning of the second-half and I think we had good control of the game over the final 20 minutes when we were ahead. We probably needed a penalty or two to get some breathing space but we didn’t and we paid the price.”

The Australian, however, was proud of his charges despite the injury-time blip. “We showed tremendous team spirit out there. We worked so hard and I can’t fault anybody for their efforts. We had a couple of sin-binnings but it was a fractious type of game. Things like that happen. The one thing I would say was that we were a bit loose in our execution with the ball in hand at times, but we’re trying to do something big here and it’s going to take time.”

Still, Leinster managed to garner a losing bonus point out of the game and although they’ll have to beat Glasgow at home and Bath away if they’re to qualify for the knock-out stages, they’re still in with a chance.

“You’ve got to imagine that Bath will have a tough time down here and if that’s the case and we beat Glasgow, we’ll be going over to Bath knowing that a victory will earn us qualification. There’s a few ifs and buts there but all’s not lost just yet.”

Cheika’s correct in his assessment and even if Leinster don’t actually qualify, it does appear that they’ve made enormous strides this year in the way they’re trying to play the game. Only seven of the starting line-up yesterday played against Bourgoin at the same venue last year, and the likes of Jamie Heaslip and Robert Kearney in particular have come on leaps and bounds under the Australian’s tutelage. When you also consider they have Brian O’Driscoll to throw into mix, things appear extremely positive. And not only that, for the first time in a long period there’s a sense that the entire squad are actually buying into the coach’s theory.

“We’re getting there,” said Cheika, “and that’s why I’m so disappointed with today. We put a lot of things into operation that we’ve been working on but we just fell short. But it’s a learning process and we still have to learn how to close games out.”

BOURGOIN: A Peclier; D Janin, D Vendetti, JF Coux, A Forest; B Boyet, M Forest (c); O Milloud, B Cabello, P Peyron, J Pierre, P Pape, J Frier, A Petrilli, W Jooste.

Replacements: P Cardinalli for Peyron, 17-27mins; C Del-Fava for Pape, 51mins; G Davis for Venditti, 77mins; I Giorgadze for Janin, 79mins.

LEINSTER: G Dempsey; K Lewis, G D’arcy, S Horgan, R Kearney; F Contepomi (c), G Easterby; R Corrigan, B Blaney, W Green, M O’Kelly, B Williams, E Miller, K Gleeson, J Heaslip.

Replacements: C Jowitt for Miller, 64mins; E Byrne for Corrigan, 64mins.

Referee: Tony Spreadbury (England)