Ross injury adds to insult as Poite enrages Leinster

An injury to Irish prop forward Mike Ross cast another dark shadow on the Leinster’s defeat to the Ospreys in last night’s RaboDirect Pro12 final at the RDS.

Ross “tweaked” a hamstring early in the game against the Welsh side and that ended his participation in a game Leinster had in the bag up to the last few minutes.

While Leinster’s campaign ended on a disappointing note, Irish coach Declan Kidney will be hoping Ross isn’t history for this season either. The essential tight head is needed for Ireland’s tour to New Zealand which begins with the first of three games against the All Blacks in Eden Park, Auckland, on June 9.

Leinster coach Joe Schmidt offered a glimmer of hope, saying Ross might have come back on the pitch in the wake of sin-binnings to two of his team’s props last night, but he stressed the importance of keeping the player fresh for the tour down under.

In other words, he probably didn’t have the option to bring Ross back on based on orders from head office.

The injury to Ross was just one of the things that went wrong at the RDS and some of it had to do with rugby referee Romain Poite, who is fast becoming the least liked official in the top echelons of the game, and particularly in Ireland followinganother display of arrogance.

Poite enraged Leinster supporters by showing yellow cards to Heineke van der Merwe and Nathan White, two of their prop forwards, and he was reluctant to engage in discussion with either of the two captains, Leinster’s Leo Cullen and the Ospreys Alun Wyn Jones at different stages of the contest.

Although the result might have had something to do with it, Poite received a hearty booing at the end of anengaging RaboDirect Pro12 final, won by the Ospreys by the slimmest of margins, 31-30.

Schmidt was reluctant to get involved in the slagging, stating: “Inevitably there is frustration when you lose a game, but we did have two props sin-binned and we will have to have a good look at that.

“There was a couple of decisions, one in the build up to the last try, inevitably you get that, but we knew Ospreys were going to come back at us and they deserve the credit for that.”

However, vanquished captain Leo Cullen was more forthcoming on Poite’s handling of the match.

He said: “He didn’t really want to talk to me today which is pretty frustrating, we picked up an award for giving away the least number of yellow cards during the season and then give away two in the final, so there is a lot of things from the game today that let me scratching my head.”