No Six Nations hangover as Leinster hold Quins to nil
JOE SHOW: Joe McCarthy of Leinster is tackled by Joe Launchbury and Fin Baxter of Harlequins. Pic: Brendan Moran/Sportsfile
One thing we know for sure after this lopsided round of 16 Champions Cup tie on Saturday is that there was no Six Nations hangover in the Leinster ranks.
No fewer than 21 of the province’s players featured for Ireland in the championship and they returned to duty here on the back of a campaign that fell short of high hopes and standards despite winning four of their five games.
That comprehensive loss to France in the fourth round condemned them to a third-place finish and triggered a wave of reflection and second-guessing through the Irish game, but now is not the time for toe-gazing for these players.
Other itches need scratching.
Leo Cullen sought to bridge the gap between Test duties and this return against Harlequins with a week off for his Irish contingent and a gentle reintroduction via a retreat day in Wicklow before they turned their attention to more mundane rugby matters.
Scoring 10 tries and nilling the opposition would suggest that all worked. And just for some added context: teams drawing blanks has become worryingly familiar in this competition, but this was the first time in its history that it has happened in a knockout game.
“I actually found it easy enough,” said Josh van der Flier of the switch in focus. “Sometimes it can be tricky without much of a turnaround. With the way the games fell we got given the week off after the Six Nations so it was weird having that time in the middle of the season.
“You feel like you should be playing rugby or training but that was good, just freshen up and forget about rugby for a while. Once we got back in then the week after we were ready to go and excited. We had a great first day back down in Wicklow. Lads came in hungry and trained really hard last week and this week just gone. Worked well.”
No-one was better two days ago than van der Flier who scattered Quins players like skittles, but you couldn’t really run a finger through the home ranks and find a player that didn’t impress such was the one-sided nature of it all.
Leinster racked up a ridiculous 826 metres with ball in hand. They made 26 clean breaks to their opponents’ one, even if Harlequins weren’t helped by the need to make five temporary replacements and bludgeon some round pegs in square holes off the back of all that.
Their head coach Danny Wilson also pointed to a pair of yellow cards but Leinster were over the hill and far, far away by the time the first of those happened. This was just a brutal beat-down of a side that, lest we forget, made the semi-final last term.
Andrew Leinster got through all this with little enough in the way of worries. Rabah Slimani and Joe McCarthy picked up a few ankle injuries but nothing that looked serious. Tadgh Furlong got another 34 minutes under his belt and Ronan Kelleher should be back for the quarter-final.
But of course none of this really matters too much in the wider context.
Leinster have been here before and bought these tee-shirts. Only by reaching the final in Cardiff’s Principality Stadium and finishing in front when the final whistle will this latest bid at a fifth star by considered a success and demons by exorcised after so many recent traumas in this competition.
Next up is a trickier assignment. Glasgow Warriors are familiar enough with these boys in blue through the annual URC merry-go-round to know what awaits them, and the Aviva Stadium capacity will be capped at 20,000 given the short six-day turnaround.
They will feel this is doable.
“Glasgow are obviously URC champions and going really well under Franco Smith since he’s come in,” said Cullen. “They have so much experience from Scottish internationals littered throughout their squad and dynamic in the way they play.
“They are a very good mauling team once they get you in their 22, usually their hooker will score a lot of tries off the back of mauls. They have a very big backline that can cause a lot of trouble, a lot of pace.
“You saw particularly away from home last season, winning away in Thomond in the semi-final, and then they won away in Loftus in the final so they are pretty comfortable being on the road. They have a hell of a lot of threats across the board.”
: H Keenan; J Osborne, G Ringrose, R Henshaw, J Lowe; S Prendergast, J Gibson-Park; A Porter, D Sheehan, R Slimani; J McCarthy, RG Snyman; J Conan, J van der Flier, C Doris.
Replacements: T Furlong for Slimani (46); L McGrath for Gibson-Park (49); J Barrett for Ringrose (51); G McCarthy for Sheehan, J Boyle for Porter and R Baird for Snyman (all 59); M Deegan for McCarthy (64); R Byrne for Keenan (67).
: L Halfpenny; T Green, O Beard, B Waghorn, N David; M Smith, W Porter; F Baxter, J Walker, T Lamositele; J Launchbury, C Cunningham-South; J Kenningham, W Evans, A Dombrandt.
Replacements: L Northmore for David (18-30), for Beard (35-40) and for Halfpenny (53); G Hammond for Evans (28); D Care for Porter (29); I Herbst for Kenningham (48); Kenningham for Launchbury, S Riley for Walker and S Kerrod for Lamositele (all 62); J Benson for Waghorn (70).
: P Brousset (Fra).
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