Leinster scramble over the line against scrappy Stormers and into URC final
HEAVY TRAFFIC: DHL Stormers' Evan Roos tackles Leinster's Caelan Doris. Pic: INPHO/Ben Brady
Leinster are just 80 minutes away from back-to-back URC titles but only after a scrappy win against a Stormers side that was gut-punched by a hat-trick of mishaps, one of them self-inflicted, in the game’s closing stretch.
It was a deeply difficult evening for the reigning champions in Ballsbridge after a blinding opening quarter and more.
If the performance left a lot to be desired then there is that old maxim about how the result is the only thing that matters in a semi-final.
As Leinster know all too well, the same can be said for finals and the province has plenty of work to be doing before it welcomes the Bulls to Croke Park next Friday week after they accounted for Glasgow in Scotland earlier on Saturday.
A moment’s applause for the recently deceased Fergus Slattery and the second semi was on, Leinster dominating the first 25 minutes in a way rarely seen at this level of rugby. The stats backing that up were off the charts.
Leo Cullen’s side had 89% possession through that spell. They had 115 metres gained against just seven for the Stormers and eleven defenders beaten to none. Problem was they only had 13 points to show for it.
Rieko Ioane got them off the mark eight minutes in, the All Black slipping in between the last two defenders out wide after Leinster had done all the damage on the blindside. The siege wasn’t nearly over yet.
A failure to capitalize on 22 entries had cost Leinster dearly in defeat to Bordeaux-Begles in the Champions Cup decider a fortnight before. They remedied that by asking Prendergast to kick two penalties here and it left them 13-0 to the good.
Not bad, but not great either given their dominance.
The Stormers eventually found their feet and began to claw things back. Adre Smith went over for their first try just shy of the half-hour and, while Jurie Matthee hit the post with his conversion, the out-half was stretching the hosts with his boot from play.
Matthee was spot on with a penalty attempt five minutes before the break and Leinster must have been kicking themselves at that point with an Ioane drop in the Stormers 22 standing out as a gilt-edged chance that went abegging.
Things were hotting up, not least with a flare-up in the tunnel as both sides left the field for the interval. It started with Thomas Clarkson and Connor Evans bouncing off each other and sucked in comrades from both sides before cooling down again.
The Stormers lost wing Leolin Zas to a yellow card for a deliberate knock-on seven minutes after the restart, but this stayed a game very much in the balance even as Leinster tried and failed to turn the screw in his absence.
Hugo Keenan had to run three-quarters the length of the park to drag down Imad Khan after the scrum-half picked up some loose scraps in his own 22. Then Prendergast smacked a clearing kick off the face of Jamison Gibson-Park.
Hairy stuff.
Matthee had kicked another penalty by the time Zas reappeared from the bin, which meant the province had ‘lost’ that ten-minute period 3-0, and the next ten minutes solved precisely nothing as the game loosened and stretched out.
Then came the twists.
What Ruan Ackermann was thinking as he ploughed so dangerously into Ronan Kelleher at a ruck – high and with his shoulder – we may never know. What it did was earn him a yellow card, a bunker review and an eventual red.
There were still 10 minutes left and then came another stroke of fortune for Leinster. A Gibson-Park pass went to ground off the leg of Salmaan Moerat at a ruck and the split second pause that fashioned allowed the scrum-half to scamper through and over.
It was their first score in 46 minutes and, incredibly, it was followed by another gift with referee Hollie Davidson and her team of officials somehow agreeing that the prone Moerat’s leg had been raised at the ruck in an attempt to deflect Gibson-Park.
An astonishing decision.
Harry Byrne’s conversion of the try left it 20-11 against a side very suddenly down to just 13 men and with the clock winding down and that was very much that. A repeat of last year’s final, when Leinster blew away the Bulls, awaits.
: H Keenan; J O’Brien, R Ioane, J Osborne, J Lowe; S Prendergast, J Gibson-Park; A Porter, R Kelleher, T Clarkson; J McCarthy, J Ryan; M Deegan, J van der Flier, C Doris.
Replacements: A Usanov for Porter (22); R Slimani for Clarkson and J Conan for van der Flier (both 55); H Byrne for Prendergast (58); G Ringrose for Osborne (63); D Mangan for McCarthy and G McCarthy for Kelleher (both 70); L McGrath for Gibson-Park (76).
: D Willemse; W Simelane, R Nel, D du Plessis, L Zas; J Matthee, I Khan; N Mchunu, AH Venter, N Fouché; A Smith, C Evans; P de Villiers, BJ Dixon, E Roos.
Replacements: M Theunissen for Evans and S Moerat for Dixon (both 47); JJ Kotze for Venter, V Matongo for Mchunu and Z Porthen for Fouche (all 54); W Gelant for Simelane (58); R Ackermann for de Villiers (60); S Ungerer for Khan (62).
: H Davidson (SRU).
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