Suffocating Leinster rain on Connacht's parade on Dexcom's big night
PARTY POOPERS: Leinster’s Charlie Tector celebrates with team mates after he scores his sides 3rd try of the match. Pic: ©INPHO/Tom O’Hanlon.
Kick-off was still over two hours away when one woman was heard explaining to her young companions, her sons maybe, about how it was only 23 years since their people marched on the IRFU offices in Dublin to ward off the threat of disbandment.
If the opening of Connacht’s new stand was the object of everyone’s attention ahead of this URC interpro against rugby’s perennial ‘haves’ from the opposite coast then there was far more to it as an occasion than mere bricks and mortar.
Giddy photos and selfies were the order of the day as the crowd converged on the fancy new plaza where the old ramshackle place used to be. In its place now a sleek, state-of-the-art edifice and monument to unapologetic ambition.
The west of Ireland rain couldn’t stay away, of course.
No-one in the stadium record gathering of 12,481 cared.
There was a light show and uilleann pipes, one of those hair-raising narrated videos with old women in shawls, men in currachs, a famine village, wild coastlines, Michael D and Catherine Connolly, and great days in the Connacht green.
And after all that there was a game of rugby.
There were ten players on the teamsheets who had named in Andy Farrell’s Six Nations squad three days earlier, eight from Leinster. Eleven more had been announced in the XVs squad, seven of those from Connacht.
The charged energy transferred over. RG Snyman and Darragh Murray were jawing and grabbing at each other, a James Ryan clearout was met with outrage and a Sam Illo tackle sent Gus McCarthy flying backwards. All inside the first minute.
When Connacht won a penalty from the scrum the stage was really set. The damage from the setpiece would continue through the half and most obviously and worryingly for Leinster and Ireland when Jack Boyle was stretchered off after one 20 minutes in.
Inexperienced as he still is, Boyle was Ireland’s most likely starting loosehead against the French in the Six Nations opener early next month, what with Andrew Porter and Paddy McCarth already absent due to injuries and both out for the foreseeable.
Both sides had landed blows by then, Fintan Gunne sniping over for the opening try eight minutes in and Dylan Tierney-Martin burrowing over for Connacht just four minutes later. Both were converted with Harry Byrne and Sam Gilbert tacking on three penalties apiece.
Thirteen-all at the break, the first 40 minutes had been scrappy on a wet but still night and with both sides making the breakdown a bit of a misery for the respective attacks. Better was to come in terms of entertainment value.
It was all Connacht for the next ten minutes of play. Paul Boyle was held up on the try line after concerted pressure but the lid came off this place a minute later when Harry West was sent over with a Finn Treacy inside pass.
It was a thing of beauty, lovely hands from Josh Ioane and some power by No.8 Sean Jansen initially breaking the line. An easy conversion left it 20-13 and then Connacht went and nixed the next three Leinster entries into their 22.
No such luck with the fourth.
Snyman has a habit of attempting offloads that his teammates can’t handle but he wasn’t handing anything off when just one metre from the line after a quick tap. Byrne’s easy extras made it 20-apiece just shy of the hour.
And then Connacht got hit again. After all their defensive heroics, this one was a killer, Charlie Tector somehow slipping through two tackles in the midfield, and off first-phase ball too. Under the posts he went. Another seven points for Leinster.
The clincher came with ten to go from soon-to-be Connacht player Ciaran Frawley. There was some luck involved, a James Lowe grubber grazing Finn Treacy’s foot before going over the end line and being tapped dead Frawley struck off the resultant scrum.
Byrne tacked on the two with his first toughish kick of the night.
Eleven minutes left on a rainy night? Yeah, Leinster were never going to let that slip. This was a tenth win on the trot for them, Connacht joining yet another victim of the current URC champions’ ability to suffocate games to sleep.
Not the grand opening Connacht wanted, but still a night to remember.
S Gilbert; S Jennings, H West, C Forde, F Treacy; J Ioane, C Blade; B Bohan, D Tierney-Martin, S Illo; J Murphy, D Murray; C Prendergast, P Boyle, S Jansen.
B Aki for Forde and J Aungier for Illo (both 10-19 and 50); D Buckley for Bohan (49); J Joyce for Murray and S O’Brien for Boyle (60); J Carty for Ioane (64); E De Buitlear for Tierney-Martin and B Murphy for Blade (both 73).
C Frawley; J Kenny, G Ringrose, C Tector, J Lowe; H Byrne, F Gunne; J Boyle, G McCarthy, N Smyth; RG Snyman, J Ruan; A Soroka, W Connors, C Doris.
J Cahir for Boyle (20); D Mangan for Soroka (45-55 and 60); R Kelleher for McCarthy, A Sparrow for Smyth and S Penny for Connors (all 49); L McGrath for Gunne (56); B Deeny for Snyman (73); R Moloney for Kenny (78).
E Cross (Ire).
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