Kids’ stuff for marauding Lions
Lansdowne Road was rocking as Leinster took the field, nearly 23,000 fans making their raucous presence felt, and they didn’t have long for a reason to cheer. Inside two minutes, Leinster scrum on the Gloucester 22, superb dummy line run by Brian O’Driscoll, long pass to strike-partner Gordon D’Arcy (my man of the match), and the whole stadium bore witness — this wasn’t just cutting-edge, this was surgical, the Gloucester defence sliced open, no anaesthetic required.
Then again, they’re only kids, these Gloucester backs, out-half Ryan Lamb, centres Anthony Allen and Jack Adams, barely 20 years of age each, making wingers Mark Foster and James Bailey look pensionable at 23, and while they’ve been doing well domestically, they haven’t come across a backline as powerful or as potent as Leinster’s before. Something readily admitted by coach Dean Ryan.
“Every lesson is a good lesson when you’re 20 years old and playing at this level. It was difficult to predict how we were going to cope with this environment because we’d never been in it together. I don’t think we showed a lot of maturity, but that’s not surprising, given it’s our first outing with this group of players. Ultimately that lack of maturity in the first-half killed us, we gave them too much high field position, and they’re too good to do that.”
Two more tries Gloucester conceded in that first half, each the result of exciting attacking play by Leinster, combined with defensive lapses. The first of those tries began with a long break from defence by full-back Girvan Dempsey, who went to ground after ignoring good support left and right. It should have been turned over; instead the ball came back to Leinster, out-half Felipe Contepomi chipped over the top, Gloucester again fumbled, allowing Felipe to fall on the ball, try.
The second was worse for Gloucester; on the attack inside the Leinster 22, had the numbers, poor pass in midfield picked up by the alert D’Arcy on his own 10, breakout, pass to Hickie who made 50m, finished off by the supporting blindside Stephen Keogh, making it 30-10 to Leinster, with half-time looming.
Mind you, Leinster had defensive frailties of their own in that first-half, as the concession of two soft tries underlines. The second of those was particularly galling, last play of the half well into added time. Adams did brilliantly to step inside three Leinster players, dance over, adding to the try scored by winger Foster in the 9th minute. Both were converted by Lamb, making it 30-17 at the break.
“I was very disappointed going in at half-time having given away that try,” said Leinster coach Michael Cheika. “It was very soft. If you saw our dressing-room you wouldn’t have thought we were in front, that was a poor finish to a half where we had really done well. We should have maintained our advantage, we need to be more determined, and having those experiences in games like this will help us in that regard.”
Cheika was much happier, however, with the performance of a Leinster youngster, scrum-half Cillian Willis, a first-cousin of Brian O’Driscoll. Playing in only his second game for Leinster, Willis had an eye-catching Heineken Cup debut. “The joke in the dressing-room at the moment is that no-one had actually seen Cillian play until last week,” grinned Cheika.
“He did well, probably tired towards the end, burst his bubble a bit. Fatigue set in and he made some decisions that probably weren’t great, gave the ball away, but the kid went out there and mixed it with one of the best half-backs around in Peter Richards, didn’t take a backward step even though there was a lot of pushing and shoving going on. I was very happy with him and he should be really proud of himself.”
O’Driscoll was taking some of the credit for his cousin’s progress. “I know how tough he is, and he is tough. We used to give him the treatment when he was younger, myself and my two other cousins — his two brothers — so I’m taking some of the plaudits for that, a bit of toughening-up back in the day and it’s standing to him now. He’s got a rocket of a pass, he’s going to get better and better. He needs games like this to improve his decision-making, he just needs some rugby, he hasn’t played a huge amount. That will give him huge confidence, he deserves every plaudit he gets.”
The second half was a far more mundane affair, Gloucester managing just a penalty as Leinster stepped up considerably on their defensive effort. They also managed to secure the bonus point, try by the ever-dangerous Shane Horgan, two tackles broken en-route, the outstanding Contepomi finishing a perfect kicking afternoon (seven from seven) with the conversion.
Impressive start by Leinster, but it could be that the real danger in this group comes from neither England nor France, but a little closer to home. Edinburgh, to be precise, Leinster’s next opponents, unlucky last-second losers in Agen on Friday night.
“They’ve had our measure in the Magner’s league,” said Cheika. “This is a real key game for us, and we spoke about that immediately post-match, it’s a key game going up there. We’re going to be under immense pressure, they play a very lateral game, side to side. Their big man in the middle, Dewey, he trucks it up, gets good go-forward, was probably the biggest contributor to our defeat there earlier in the season. We really want to go there and try to get an edge in the group.”
LEINSTER: G. Dempsey; S. Horgan, B. O’Driscoll, G. D’Arcy , D. Hickie; F. Contepomi, C. Willis (inj. 80+2 A. Dunne); R. McCormack, B. Blaney (H. Vermaas 75), W. Green (inj. 72 R. Corrigan); T. Hogan (A. Byrnes 75), M. O’Kelly; S. Keogh (O. Finegan 77), K. Gleeson, J. Heaslip.
GLOUCESTER: I. Balshaw; J. Bailey, J. Adams, A. Allen, M. Foster; R. Lamb, P. Richards; C. Califano, M. Davies, C. Nieto; M. Bortolami, A. Eustace; P. Buxton, A. Hazell, J. Forrester.
Referee: C. Berdos (FRU — blood sub 78 E. Gauzins FRU).
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