As a loyal Leinster fan/blogger I guess I’d need a pretty good excuse to not only miss my team’s final regular season home game but also take a few days to post my write up.
I guess my 1yr old son having to go to hospital for acute conjunctivitis on Saturday afternoon qualifies as a good one, right?
Being in touch with so many people on Twitter & Facebook as I am I felt it best to tell a white lie that it was myself who was ill so as people wouldn’t worry. And thankfully the little fella has been IVed to the max and is now home & hosed and back to his old self again.
But Sunday night it was my turn to get to stay at home while his mum did the hospital overnighter, so I at least got to see a recording of what went on at the RDS, and what a match it was.
I’ve seen teams come back from 8 points down in a rugby match before. I’ve also seen teams come back from 14 points before. But for the life of me I haven’t seen anyone come back from BOTH deficits at two different parts of the same game.
Edinburgh have to be praised. They needed a bonus point win and they came with an all-attacking style that was designed to do just that, and they were duly rewarded with a bonus point for that.
But of the four tries the home side managed to get in return (which ironically yielded our one and only try-scoring bonus of the season), I have to point our Shaggy’s, because for me it perfectly symbolised Leinster’s run-in to their Magners League campaign.
First, the mercurial stand-in outhalf (and my vote for Player Of The Year) Isa Nacewa made a cutting line break before chucking a perfect pass to Horgan, a sequence which in this little metaphor represents our 7 league wins in a row which put us within touching distance of a 1st place finish.
And when Shaggy got the ball, it looked for all intents and purposes that he was going to make it over the line, much like it seemed we’d be top seed in the playoffs.
But as he ran towards the line, you started to wonder if he had the legs to make it, especially with his opposite number Mark Robertson bearing down on him. This doubt is much like our recent defeats in Galway and Glasgow, plus our early setbacks in Sunday’s contest.
But when it came to the crunch, our cult hero number 14 had enough to put the ball down over the line, much as Leinster were able to secure two late tries to make it 9 Magners League wins out of 9 at the RDS for the 2009/10 season, and if that doesn’t show value for money on a season ticket, I don’t know what does.
Of course you can’t discount Nacewa’s seven-for-seven display from the kicking tee. Not too shabby from someone who isn’t even in our top three pecking order! Or least he wasn’t before Sunday!
And with Munster limping over the playoff line despite defeat in Cardiff, it now leaves us with a mouth-watering semifinal derby on Saturday evening which, despite the differing league records, could easily go either way.
Do you still think the playoff system doesn’t add anything to the rugby season? What would we be looking forward to right now without it?
Here’s hoping for a night to remember at D4tress. For the boys in blue, of course.
