Nothing illustrates the before and after test better then the back to back rounds of the Champions Cup. Harlequins left the Aviva Stadium annoyed they had not beaten Leinster in front of the biggest crowd of the weekend – 38,500 – but they still kept their noses in front of the three-times champions at the top of Pool Two.
“That’s massive,” Conor O’Shea, Quins’ director of rugby, said. “And I was saying that to the players but they’re gutted. We came here to win. We didn’t come here to be a plucky second and we could have won and it would have been an historic win for the club. But we’re in control of the pool and we’ve Wasps at home and Castres away so that’s a massive plus. But we wanted to win.”
The comfort for Quins is that they are ahead of Leinster on the head to head if it comes down it. Level on five match points each over the two legs, they won the try count 3-1, and it might have been more but for a controversial TMO call that robbed the excellent Mike Brown of what would have been a lovely score. In any case he got over for an undisputed touchdown a few minutes later.
Quins probably deserved at least a draw for they played better rugby with ball in hand. Their problem was that for most of the first half they were making tackles – almost twice as many as Leinster’s 40 in that first period – but changed the trend after the break.
“We felt it looked like there was space and that’s what we said at half-time: ‘Stay patient,’” O’Shea said.
“We started getting frustrated at the end of the first half and giving away needless penalties but once we held on to the ball we caused them trouble. That was more like how we can play – that second half – it’s just disappointing we left it until the second half.”
The cost of the effort was another injury to a back rower. O’Shea conceded that the departure of Luke Wallace “didn’t look great,” so combined with the absence of Chris Robshaw they are under pressure in that area. “We’ll see what we can pull together,” the coach said.
Leinster will hope to have two international props in Cian Healy and Marty Moore back on deck when they set sail again in this competition – at home next month to Castres, who by then will be making up the numbers – as well as the wing Dave Kearney, who is already close to full fitness. The props will be a boost, for over these two games Leinster suffered against the Harlequins scrum.
“We didn’t get to the level we wanted to be at,” Matt O’Connor, Leinster’s head coach, said. “There were errors and there were opportunities we didn’t take and there were set-piece issues. It was about keeping ourselves alive in the group and we’ve done that. We have a breather now, although we’ve got some tough games in the Pro12 coming up. We can improve. We’ve got lots of growth there.”
Surely the area with greatest scope for improvement is their offload game. On eight occasions Quins got the ball away before, or out of, the tackle - Leinster didn’t manage one. The most effective example of this for the away team was Matt Hopper’s pop up that kept alive the movement finished by Mike Brown for a try ust before the hour mark. It brought Quins back to 11-10 having trailed 11-0 at half time. When Tim Swiel stuck over a penalty on 67 minutes to give them the lead for the first time Leinster were looking at an early exit from the competiton. The arrival of Eoin Reddan into the game helped shift the momentum however, and Ian Madigan’s match winning penalty five minutes confirmed it.
Leinster Kearney; Kirchner, Fitzgerald, Madigan, Fanning; Gopperth, Boss (Reddan, 50); McGrath (Bent, 77), Cronin, Ross, Toner, Douglas (McCarthy, 58), Ruddock (Conan, 64), Heaslip (capt), Ryan.
Try Boss. Pens Madigan 3.
Harlequins Brown (Chisum, 75); Yarde, Hopper, Lowe, Tikoirotuma (Twomey, 80); Swiel, Care; Marler (capt), Ward, Collier, Matthews, Robson, Wallace (Trayfoot, 72), Easter, Clifford.
Try Brown. Con Swiel. Pens Swiel 2.
Referee R Poite (Fr). Att 38,500.
