Disciplined Leinster tame plucky Tigers

OPINION was divided afterwards, more or less along lines of partiality.

One view was that Leinster had made it harder than necessary on themselves. Another had it that, in the end, Leicester were unlucky not to squeak through.

Joe Schmidt summed it up just about right.

“They deserved to be that close to us,” said the Leinster coach. “They had a massive amount of ball and they put us under a lot of pressure. We had the luxury of putting scoreboard pressure on them. We got our noses in front and kept in front. We got lucky when Alesana Tuilagi put his foot on some whitewash and maybe we were a little bit unlucky as well. We had some fantastic opportunities and I thought our lineout stats would have been very good but our finishing of those line breaks was disappointing.”

Schmidt’s opposite number, Richard Cockerill, spoke about a game of tiny margins and that too was a fair assessment, one given all the weight necessary by Tuilagi’s near-miss and Isa Nacewa’s debated try just five minutes later.

The Samoan’s was ruled out after Sean O’Brien did just enough to make his left leg graze the paint as he touched down after 43 minutes while the Fijian’s was deemed perfectly acceptable despite a forward pass to Shane Horgan on the halfway line.

Them’s the breaks.

“Alesana is in touch so it is no try,” said Cockerill. “No issues with that. Was it a forward pass? Yeah, maybe, maybe not but it was 50 metres from your goal-line and you have got to make your tackles. That’s not here nor there.”

Those two incidents were the game in microcosm – Leicester’s beef and brawn repelled by a superb Leinster defence at one end while the home side’s superior skill and artistry with ball in hand had prised the opening at the other.

A converted try for Tuilagi would have left Leinster a point adrift but O’Brien’s critical intervention and Nacewa’s magic through the Leicester rearguard soon after left them protecting an 11-point advantage.

“I saw it early on and I just took a chance on it from this side of the field,” said O’Brien. “I just took off for the corner. I didn’t think he would get that far but I threw myself at him and it paid off. That’s the kind of thing that changes a game.”

That it did but O’Brien’s tackle was a rarity in that it was executed in some desperation on a player that had already penetrated the blue line on a day when it would take the visitors 77 minutes to claim their one and only five-pointer.

Leinster’s rearguard was simply heroic. Again.

They soaked up 12 successive Leicester phases before lifting the siege courtesy of a penalty at the start of the second quarter and somehow managed to improve on that on the hour when 14 moves came to naught but a turnover.

It was an incredible display of commitment and discipline in a game that was brutal in its physicality and Leinster deserved their victory after going toe to toe at the rucks and breakdown, breaking even at the scrum and destroying the Tigers lineout.

In that last act, Kevin McLaughlin was magnificent, as he was around the park, while the undoubted man of the match was South African hooker Richardt Strauss – two of the side’s ‘lesser’ lights leading the way.

Cockerill spoke about the absence of four key locks afterwards and questioned Nigel Owens’ habit of penalising his side in possession but, as is their wont, Leicester never gave up not even when trailing 17-3 and with time almost up.

Leinster should have cut off any debate at the pass long before but they spurned two early try opportunities when Cian Healy ignored an overlap and Luke Fitzgerald overran a Strauss pass, both of them within spitting distance of the line.

Luckily, Jonathan Sexton was in a more clinical frame of mind and three penalties from the out-half to Flood’s one left six points in it at the break before Tuilagi’s brush with the headlines was compounded by Nacewa’s merry dance.

Leicester still had their chances but Flood kicked a simple penalty wide – from the same spot as a similar faux pas last month with England – before replacement lock Ed Slater fumbled forward near the line with Leinster stretched and men to his left.

Rob Hawkins finally breached the home defences with three minutes to go but Sexton had already landed his fourth penalty and that Leinster defence was never likely to cough up a second try in three short minutes.

They will be hard stopped now.

LEINSTER: I Nacewa; S Horgan, B O’Driscoll, G D’Arcy, L Fitzgerald; J Sexton, E Reddan; C Healy, R Strauss, M Ross; L Cullen, N Hines; K McLaughlin, S O’Brien, J Heaslip. Replacements: I Boss for Reddan (58); D Ryan for McLaughlin (67); F McFadden for Horgan (75); H van der Merwe for Healy (78).

LEICESTER: S Hamilton; H Agulla, M Tuilagi, A Allen, A Tuilagi; T Flood, B Youngs; B Stankovich, G Chuter, D Cole; L Deacon, S Mafi; T Croft, C Newby, J Crane.

Replacements: E Slater for Deacon (29); M Castrogiovanni for Cole (52); T Waldrom for Crane (61); J Crane for Newby (74); R Hawkins for Chuter (75); D Cole for Stankovich (75); M Smith for Agulla (77).

Referee: N Owens (WRU).