Smooth start but Leinster not where Cullen wants to be
HEAD TO HEAD: Hugo Keenan of Leinster is tackled by Arron Reed of Sale Sharks during the Investec Champions Cup Pool 4 Round 2 match between Leinster and Sale Sharks at the RDS Arena in Dublin. Photo by Sam Barnes/Sportsfile
What’s not to like? Two wins from two in the Champions Cup, the first of them a cathartic defeat of La Rochelle in France. Top of the URC approaching Christmas. Eight wins on the bounce across both competitions. A serviceable injury list.
If Leinster appear to be gliding serenely then they are paddling fairly furiously underneath and this sloppy and scrappy five-try, bonus-point defeat of the Premiership leaders gives greater depth and insight beneath that milk-pond surface.
Down 13-11 at the break, they played some good rugby in the course of the next half-hour to break the game and the opposition before conceding a second and third try at the fag end when reduced to 13 men by Hugo Keenan’s yellow and injury to Charlie Ngatai.
If those two latter concessions were distorted by the lack of numbers, and a sense that the game was already done, then Leo Cullen admitted that a defence still adapting to the ideas of the recently-arrived Jacques Nienaber will take time to find its feet.
The South African is less than a month into his new job, after all, and Robbie Henshaw spoke last week about the bit-by-bit nature of the changes being made there as the team goes about its business at the weekends.
Leinster’s attack was probably more of an issue here. Or, to be more precise, their inaccuracies with ball in hand. Such errors were more understandable in La Rochelle given the filthy weather. The RDS on Saturday was mild, dry and still.
That’s of a piece with their performances through much of the campaign so far and the thought struck watching them pull away against Sale that such issues would be punished to a much more clinical and costly degree come April or May.
“Just because you’ve won a few games you can’t think you have all the answers,” said Leo Cullen. “We’ll be the first to put our hands up and say we’re not where we would like to be at the moment and that’s important for us as a group if we want to improve week to week.”
That said, Leinster have reason to be happy with their fortnight’s work. The La Rochelle game was always going to be an arm wrestle and a weakened Sale gave them serious problems, especially in the first half, and never threw in the towel.
Compare Leinster’s two European openers this month to the equivalents last year – a 42-10 romp against Racing 92 in Le Havre and a 57-0 drubbing of Gloucester in Dublin – and it suggests a workload that will surely stand more to them going forward.
"Yeah, I think it's a good point,” said Cullen. “Definitely. Sometimes, you go through the pool stages and you don't get these real dogfight kind of games. Look at Stormers v La Rochelle, it's close to knockout and the intensity of the games is great to see.”
This was a boon in other ways too. Thomas Clarkson made a Champions Cup debut at tighthead and Sam Prendergast and Ben Murphy joined him in that from off the bench. Ciaran Frawley’s run at ten wasn’t perfect but that too was his first start in the pivot position at this level.
“You could see he was nervous, like. We looked nervy as a team before the game. That’s the thing about a Sale, they are going to test you with their kicking and their physicality. If you’re not accurate, really accurate, then suddenly life becomes a bit difficult.
“He showed some good composure I thought at times during the game and he is a constant threat. The forwards were probably better for him in the second half because we were starting to win some of those contact battles, particularly when we had the ball.”
These are all incremental gains that will earn interest in the bank as time goes on and the province has earned the opportunity to ease up on the throttle as it takes a mini-break now on the back of a run of nine games in as many weekends.
Munster in Thomond Park on the 26th is their next port of call but there is no game scheduled for the week after the New Year’s Day clash with Ulster at the RDS and that on the back of the three weeks the Irish players got off post-World Cup.
All of which points to the possibility that the Leinster team we see in Limerick for the traditional St Stephen’s Day clash features more ‘big guns’ than usual. Cullen didn’t do anything to dissuade that theory.
“It's different this year, definitely, guys have come back in the past after a break week, but this was a longer break, sometimes three to four weeks off. We've guys coming back in round five, round six and didn't play Connacht. Guys have been well-managed, to be fair.”
H Keenan; J Larmour, G Ringrose, R Henshaw, J O’Brien; C Frawley, J Gibson-Park; A Porter, D Sheehan, T Clarkson; J Jenkins, J Ryan; R Baird, J van der Flier, C Doris.
J McCarthy for Jenkins (HT); M Ala’alatoa for Clarkson (45); C Ngatai for Larmour (56); R Kelleher for Sheehan (60); C Healy for Porter (65); J Conan for Doris and S Prendergast for Frawley (both 67); B Murphy for Gibson-Park (70).
T Veainu; T Roebuck, C Doherty, S Bedlow, A Reed; R du Preez, R Quirke; R Harrison, T Taylor, J Harper; B Bamber, J Beaumont; E van Rhyn, S Dugdale, R Birch.
Opoku-Fordjour for Harper (47); JL du Preez for Birch (49); J Hill for Beaumont (52); J Carpenter for Veainu, T Onasanya for Harrison and Beamont for van Rhyn (all 59); T Curtis for Doherty (60); N Thomas for Quirke (66); E Caine for Beaumont (68).
P Brousset (France)
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