So it's ten minutes into the second half and Leinster get an excellent attacking position with a scrum close to the Ospreys line.
The ball shoots out the back past skipper and No8 Rhys Ruddock, who makes an attempt in vain to retrieve the situation but only manages to knock it on and give the home side, already 27-3 to the good, a chance to clear, which Dan Biggar does as soon as he gets his hands on the ball.
Up in the BBC Wales commentary box, Jonathan Davies is hopping mad. Why? Because as he goes on to point out with his telstrator do-hickey mechanism, Biggar actually had an overlap outside him and the former dual-code Welsh international star just cannot understand why the Ospreys didn't make the most of the situation.
How about I offer a suggestion for you, Jonathan? Maybe, just maybe, they went into the second half with a mindset to kick the ball whenever they got it, taking into account they were playing the European Champions and being mindful what we had done to Northampton up the M4 in Cardiff last May?
Put simply, even with World Cup players out of the picture, most true rugby fans would expect that a team that turns over the ball over a dozen times is going to be punished at this level. And the way we played, especially in the first half, made the Ospreys' task of putting the four points to bed early very easy indeed.
Where could I start with our mistakes? Lineout throws aimed at the back yet sailing over? A mix-up between two of our back three letting the ball needlessly go into touch in our own 22? Our scrum-half attempting a box-kick that went straight into touch? A “clearance” by our normally Mr Dependable full-back that somehow managed to go laterally across the pitch? A penalty at the breakdown conceded that was so blatant and so worthy of a yellow card without getting one you'd swear Rhys Ruddock was wearing a a Richie McCaw mask?
And all of the above errors, I should add, were in the same series of plays that led to Dan Biggar tacking on a penalty to the first minute try for man-of-the-match Rhys Webb.
Now if I really wanted to be cynical I could make this post all about that opening five-pointer, seeing how the ball had been illegally kicked out of the ruck and the slick backline move which followed included a blatantly forward offload (which Davies chose not to use his telestrator for) from Fussell to Beck.
But although that was hardly what any team needs in the first few minutes of a new season especially on the road, it doesn't excuse Leinster's biggest no-no of the first half...an absolute meltdown on offense when it came to protecting the ball after being presented at rucks & scrums.
It's true – the Ospreys set themselves up in the first half to come after us at the breakdown, the stray ruck-boot was early evidence of this. But when a player makes an impressive barrelling run forward as the likes Kevin McLaughlin, Eoin O'Malley and new number 12 Luke Fitzgerald often did, they have to expect the support to be there to protect the ball when it's presented after contact.
And time, and time, and time again, it just simply wasn't, and when you watch it over you can see the hesitancy in the Ospreys forwards as if to say “is it really this easy?” while they surge forward to steal the ball back every time.
You always want to be encouraging to a young player trying to get some senior gametime under his belt, but by the same token certain standards have to be employed at a trophy-winning outfit like Leinster rugby, and rookie John Cooney rightly got the hook at halftime.
But that's not to say we were so far behind at the break purely because of the Lansdowne youngster. For one thing, ball protection is also a remit of the backrow and perhaps the responsibilities of captaincy, number 8 AND helping out a less- experienced-yet-actually-older scrumhalf was too much for Rhys Ruddock on the night.
And it wasn't all about the loose ball around the breakdown either. In my Magners League final report I pointed out our poor choice of play on offense, and it was no better here. Until Ian Madigan came on in the second half, it seemed we were so locked in to a gameplan of phase, phase, phase that not even a deficit of Cardiff proportions would snap us out of it.
Speaking of Madigan coming on...did I not mention Mat Berquist before now? There's a reason for that. He really impressed me in pre-season against Melbourne but he won't be facing any more SupeRugby outfits while he's here. Fact is, he has come here to do a job, he has experience at this level if not this competition, and settling quickly would definitely be in his job description given our forced absentees.
Maybe it was the style of game he was forced to play, but one improbable banana-kick does not an amazing competitive Leinster debut make, and he'll need to do a lot more to dazzle the RDS faithful next Friday!
My biggest frustration on the night was when the clock had actually turned red for halftime and we had good possession but rather than have a go out wide and perhaps make something happen, we hopped on the phase train and once again got thwarted by a fly-hack, perfectly legal this time, and what turned out to be the game-clinching try was secured by Ospreys skipper Tipuric after the only true burst of magic on the night from Webb.
As for the second half, well as I have already outlined, the home side chose not to go for the bonus point jugular, and you'll have to ask coach Scott Johnson why that was, I felt we were there for the taking. Instead we got some more time in the red zone only to catch the famous knock-on gremlins again, sometimes the result of carelessness, more often the result of more tough Osprey defending.
And it wasn't as though a yellow card was going to help us either – Tipuric saw the bin and though Cillian Willis and Madigan added some creativity, I think our goose was well and truly cooked at halftime, at least as far as winning was concerned – the home side's second half caution possibly means we left a bonus point out on the pitch.
So to summarize, when at halftime I was hoping to be able to compare this match to the last time we played in Wales, I ended up having to compare it to the last time we played one week after playing the Northampton Saints.
Was it all bad? Pretty much – I could pick out some individual displays that were ok but then I'd have to pick out more individual displays that definitely weren't. I could also have a good moan about referee Peter Fitzgibbon but the truth is that it was Leinster’s team effort from tactics to execution that bothered me most watching this one.
But do I think we can sort it? Absolutely - though having watched the performance of the Dragons at Musgrave Park without their five-star selection of Brew, Burns, Charteris, Faletau & Lydiate, we're going to have to sort out our halfback situation if we're going to make the most of our upcoming schedule that sees us play 7 of out next 10 RaboDirect Pro 12 (it's even a mouthful when you type it!) matches at home.
Besides – Leinster don't do opening day wins, it doesn't seem in our nature, and I reckon we have the right man at the helm to turn things around even more quickly than he did last year. JLP
CLICK HERE FOR A RANT ABOUT A LAW OF THE GAME I THINK NEEDS ENFORCING MORE OFTEN
