Leinster smash La Rochelle to set up Croke Park Champions Cup semi-final
Leinster’s James Lowe scores a try against La Rochelle in the Champions Cup quarter-final. Picture: ©INPHO/Dan Sheridan
Nobody, just nobody, saw this coming. The result, sure, maybe. The scoreline, never.
European club rugby’s pre-eminent rivalry has swung definitively in Leinster’s favour with Leo Cullen’s men following up last December’s pool win in La Rochelle with a comprehensive five-try, 27-point defeat of the reigning champions in Saturday’s quarter-final.
The Irish side never trailed in this Champions Cup quarter-final against the team that had bested them so narrowly in the last two deciders, and in the 2020/21 semi-final at Stade Marcel Deflandre, but it earns them nothing they can put on a shelf.
The four-time champions now face the winners of the Northampton Saints and Bulls last eight tie in Franklin’s Gardens later Saturday night. That semi will be played in Croke Park, the reward for the winner will be a shot at the title in the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium later in May.
A fifth star feels far closer for Leinster now.
For Ronan O’Gara’s deposed champions, this was a haunting way for their three-in-a-row ambitions to be extinguished but their form has been up and down all season and the strains of the recent La Rochelle-South Africa-Paris-Cork-Dublin schedule can’t have helped.
The Munster legend had brought his players to his home town last Monday to spare themselves 12 hours of travel, feed off the vibes and maybe get inside Leinster’s heads but they simply never found a stride, or an in, here.
Both were missing key players. La Rochelle had to do without three of their starting pack and full-back Brice Dulin. Leinster were short of co-captains James Ryan and Garry Ringrose and then lost Hugo Keenan to a recurring hip issue late in the week.
That’s rugby, not least come April.
This one didn’t explode out of the blocks like that final here last May but Leinster did enjoy much the better of the opening half despite a couple of stutters with a lost lineout, a forward Jamison Gibson-Park pass and a Frawley kick charged down.
La Rochelle weren’t in the sort of gear to make miles on the back of any of that and, after Ross Byrne opened the scoring with a penalty, we got the game’s first try after 17 minutes and it was a superbly entertaining piece of a thing.
Big hits had been made on both sides by then and it was no different as Leinster worked the opening. Jamie Osborne’s crosskick stretched and stressed the belligerent defence first and James Lowe was finally manoeuvred over on their own left wing.
Ross Byrne added the two extras points. His goal-kicking was exemplary from tricky positions in hat opening period but Leinster were offering up cheap points at the other end with Antoine Hastoy kicking over two penalties off the back of botched restarts.
A 13-6 lead coming up to the hour was widened by three just after it but Leinster have demonstrated a lack of a killer touch in the opposition 22 far too much this season and Lowe and Gibson-Park were both held up over the line by that stage.
One on its own would have felt big, two was a real worry.
On they pushed, though. Their second try was brilliantly worked and a little fortuitous with Lowe’s offload bouncing forward off Gibson-Park’s shoulder and into the scrum-half’s hands. The path from there was clear of resistance.
Now they were smoking. Byrne’s fourth pop at the posts made it 23-6 and gave Leinster a 17-point lead to match the one they let slip eleven months ago. Anyone of a superstitious bent must have felt instantly uneasy, even with the break two minutes away.
Sure enough, La Rochelle enjoyed their most prolonged period of possession to date and, thanks to a handful of successive penalties, good territory with it. It ended with young prop Louis Penverne rumbling over from a lineout maul four minutes into injury-time.
Hastoy’s conversion brought the difference down to ten points which felt like a shocking return given the home side’s dominance, La Rochelle’s ability to arise from the dead and a swirling wind that should have worked in their favour on the restart.
It didn’t.
Andrew Porter reset the tone by winning a jackal penalty on Gregory Alldritt and Leinster worked another mesmeric move through the hands off the back of it before Ryan Baird bounced off one last desperate tackle and cantered over.
The visitors’ predicament was all the more acute when scrum-half Tawera Kerr-Barlow was stretchered off after lengthy medical attention, Byrne kicked another post-splitter – for another 17-point lead - and Leinster demolished them in the next scrum.
Less than six second-half minutes had gone.
Was that that passage that won it? Or was it the big, successful defensive set Leinster put in on the restart when Frawley jettisoned from his wing berth on the defensive line and latched limpet-like onto Thomas? Either way, the life was being squeezed from the visitors.
This wasn’t in the script. A sold out Aviva crowd had come for a gladiatorial battle not a procession but procession it was as Dan Sheehan and Lowe again skipped over for tries number four and five after 56 and 61 minutes.
That was the end of the scoring but the edge that characterises all good rivalries emerged with less than three minutes to go when the players got into a brief and semi-heated bout of handbags after some mouthing and shoving.
They may well meet again. For now they have their separate paths.
C Frawley; J Larmour, R Henshaw, J Osbourne, J Lowe; R Byrne, J Gibson Park; A Porter, D Sheehan, T Furlong; J McCarthy, J Jenkins; R Baird, W Connors, C Doris.
Replacements: J van der Flier for Connors (49); R Molony for Jenkins (51); R Kelleher for Sheehan, M Milne for Porter and M Ala’alatoa for Furlong (all 58); H Byrne for R Byrne (63); J Conan for Doris (72); L McGrath for Gibson-Park (73).
D Leyds; J Nowell, UJ Seuteni, J Danty, T Thomas; A Hastoy, T Kerr-Barlow; L Penverne, T Latu, U Atonio; U Dillane, W Skelton; J Cancoriet, L Botia, Greg Alldritt.
Replacements: I West for Leyds (HT); T Iribaren for Kerr-Barlow (44); Q Lespiaucq-Brettes for Latu, A Kaddouri for Penverne and J Sclavi for Atonio (all 53); Y Tanga for Botia and P Boudehent for Cancoriet (both 63); T Lavault for Skelton (66).
K Dickson (Eng).
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