Cheika ends Reds rivalry with a bang

THE ageing, rickety old RDS was almost shaken from its foundations for the final 40 minutes of Saturday night’s Magners League semi-final in which Leinster overpowered Munster for the fourth time in as many meetings of these old rivals.

Departing Leinster coach Michael Cheika initially struggled to find his feet in this particular derby situation but as he prepares to take up his new challenge at Stade Francais, he might feel well entitled to claim that he has figured it all out pretty impressively.

But that’s not the way of the Aussie who is unquestionably leaving Leinster in a far better position than he found it.

He has the deepest respect for Munster from his early days when they generally held sway in the series and little has changed in that regard.

“You know Munster are so dangerous that they’ll just take it away from you,” he said.

“You can get caught in a trap against them. This derby thing has been a real learning curve for me and it’s obviously great for me to sign off with a victory. We were under a bit of pressure in he first half but you can’t turn it on for 80 minutes. At half-time, we agreed that we needed to take players away from slowing down our ball and get the pattern going that we wanted to play.

“That comes down to the basics, a lot of body height, getting the shoulder right, getting past the ball and again our defence was very good and that gave us a very good platform. CJ (van der Linde) made a good impact and Mike Ross played well last week so it’s going to be tough to leave someone out for the final.”

Cheika will be at the helm of Stade Francais next season and unless the sides meet in the Heineken Cup over the next couple of years, Cheika will be shut of Munster for a while.

But if it happens, he says he will know that “they are so dangerous on the ball, guys like Earls, Howlett, Mafi, de Villiers – and O’Leary in close – they can make breaks.

“Our players know them very well and they’re worried about them making a break so they need to be organised in defence.”

Shane Jennings is clearly staking a claim on David Wallace’s number seven jersey with Ireland and certainly he put in a tireless and impressive 80 minutes on Saturday.

“Against that wind in the second-half, we knew we had to step it up,” said Leinster skipper Jennings.

“They’re good at slowing down the ball at the ruck, Williams is good over the ball, their hooker (Damian Varley) is good over the ball, but we improved so much in that area that it gave us with a bit of ball to play with and the boys came up with a good score.

“I don’t know how Cian (Healy) didn’t score but even the resulting three points were important and gave us a bit of breathing room. But they kept going at us. It was a tough game, they’re a very physical side, and as everybody knows, they’re never going to lie down so it was a great game.”

And the Jennings read on the Tomás O’Leary tackle on Cian Healy: “He hit him a good belt but I don’t think there was anything dirty about it except that Cian will be disappointed that he didn’t score.

“Was it a penalty try? Well, he wasn’t grounding the ball to be fair, whether he was in the act or motion of scoring a try is questionable.”