The game looks up for Leinster
They still have a mathematical chance of qualifying but it looks curtains now. Toulon visit the Aviva Stadium on Saturday with their own ambitions resurrected after defeat to Wasps but the hosts will be playing for pride and to avoid a first ever quartet of consecutive losses in Europe.
Bleak times.
And yet, this was one that got away from the visitors who did many things right against an off-colour Toulon side whose superiority in resources both financial and in terms of personnel was not so obvious on the field where their strengths were nullified for large spells.
Leinster competed aggressively at the breakdown, they disrupted their hosts’ lineout and competed well in the scrum. They also defended superbly for long periods with a line speed and a physicality that prevented Toulon from clicking in to gear.
All that made for an excellent platform on which to engineer what would have been a shock win but they were undone by a spate of unforced errors and an attacking game that, a few brief sparks aside, continues to confound and pale in comparison to the slick machine it once was under Joe Schmidt.
One try in three pool games now tells a story.
There are a number of reasons for that but chief among them yesterday was the paucity of the performance by Jonathan Sexton who racked up a plethora of individual errors between his kicking from hand and a passing game that was equally inaccurate at times.
The extent of Sexton’s struggles since the World Cup, at least, is startling though not so much as the fact that he lasted the full 80 minutes. Coach Leo Cullen only sprang Ian Madigan from the bench with three minutes to go and even then it was Luke Fitzgerald who made way.
Sexton did kick three penalties inside the first 25 minutes to give them some reward for a strong start but he missed one after the restart that would have given Leinster a 12-10 lead and the visitors failed to add to the scoreboard for the final 55 minutes.
They weren’t helped by referee Nigel Owens who penalised them 17 times – against Toulon’s seven – and there are clear grounds for making the case that the Welshman should have been firmer in dealing with Toulon at the breakdown and on the defensive offside line.
Yet, here again Leinster didn’t help themselves. Their discipline let them down most obviously in the form of the yellow cards earned by Cian Healy and Devin Toner. Tom Denton was a third player to be sinbinned but that was late on when the game was done and dusted.
Playing Toulon with 15 men is hard enough, doing so for an hour with 14 must be especially arduous and Healy was at the very least foolish to charge Guilhem Guirado as he did after 29 minutes when his knee made what looked to be inadvertent contact with the Frenchman’s head.
Toner was waved off for pulling down a maul five minutes after the interval though there were far too many other examples of Leinster undercutting themselves with silly errors that they simply could not afford against a side that had not lost one of their previous 15 European home games.
Most frustrating of all was the fact that they gave themselves every chance with two opening penalties from Sexton that established a 6-0 lead and a third kick after 25 minutes that left them just a point behind after Toulon had hit back. The opening try came a dozen minutes in through Steffon Armitage who bulldozed over on the back of a mauling pack that obliterated the Leinster defence. Scrum-half Eric Escande followed the successful conversion with a penalty 22 minutes in.
Leinster hung in after the interval but they were dominated in the territorial stakes and their rare attacking bursts evaporated in the second period though Cullen left a struggling Sexton in situ and Madigan sitting on the bench almost to the bitter end. Steffon Armitage removed even the remote possibility of a losing bonus point by diving over for his second try in injury-time and that was that. Leinster at least had the consolation prize of Challenge Cup when they exited this early three seasons ago.
Not this time.
D Armitage; B Habana, M Bastareaud, M Nonu, D Mitchell; M Giteau, E Escande; F Florian, G Guirado, M Stevens; S Manoa, R Taofifeuna; M Gorgodze, S Armitage, D Vermeulen.
L Chilachava for Stevens (HT); J Smith for Gorgodze and X Chiocci for Fresia (both 52); J Suta for Manoa (54); A Etrillard for Guirado and T Taylor for D Armitage (both 60); M Mermoz for Nonu (70); A Meric for Escabde (77).
R Kearney; F McFdden, B Te’o, L Fitzgerald, I Nacewa; J Sexton, I Boss; C Healy, R Strauss, M Ross; D Toner, M McCarthy; R Ruddock, J van der Flier, J Heaslip.
J McGrath for van der Flier (29-39); J McGrath for Healy, S Cronin for Strauss and M Moore for Ross (all 51); E Reddan for Boss (52); T Denton for McCarthy and D Kearney for R Kearney (both 62); J Murphy for van der Flier (70); I Madigan for Fitzgerald (77).
N Owens (Wales).
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