Cardiff Blues-11 Leinster-3

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TRYLESS & ERRORS

There’s loads of ways of comparing this Leinster display to that of the national team last Sunday…excellent defence, several knockons, opposition not playing great, strong start to second half.

But there was one major difference…Jason Harris-Wright’s wayward dart towards the end was just the final insult of an uncharacteristic 80 minutes when we couldn’t even buy a meaningful score.

And although Cardiff were the home side and need success in this competition more than we do, I have to question the coaching calls for the loss.

Joe Schmidt has worked hard to develop an ethos of attacking rugby throughout this squad, but from the looks of our approach when we had the ball in the early stages, seemed to abandon it because of the wealth of experience in our front five.

Now even in the darkest early times of last September I defended him, but I think the coach dropped the ball in Cardiff City Stadium yesterday.  The type of game he has brought to Leinster is a joy to watch and it is designed to produce tries, but if he is to be in charge of such a large squad of players he has to trust them ALL to be able to execute the game plan whatever the competition, whoever the opponent is and wherever the ballpark is.

Andrew Conway has shown with his try-scoring for the A side that he is ready for the top level, so why not get him the ball more often?  He had just the one chance in Cardiff, and but for a matter of inches could have been making the headlines on Sunday morning.

Instead Leinster put all their eggs in the defensive basket, and sure, they made Cardiff work like Trojans to barely get the one try in the corner from the impressive Dan Fish (pic) but the effort came at too heavy a price.

As things turned out, it was a senseless penalty from Dominic Ryan that denied us even a losing bonus, but the guy had run his socks off up to then making tackles and clearing rucks.  I predicted we would lose this match but only on the basis that the home side had a superior back row. Messrs Ryan, Ruddock and McLoughlin (and Keogh when he came on) proved me wrong on that score.

It was just whenever we had the ball, we looked like a right-handed team using our left hand.

To say Cardiff were “aggressive” in defence of the breakdown is being very kind, to the referee that is.  They should have had at least two yellows and more penalties called as well, and that’s down to the inexperienced ref.

But that doesn’t excuse the countless times the ball was poorly protected after the tackle, and that, to me anyway, is a sign of a unit trying something different and failing.

I honestly believe we didn’t need a perfect defence to win.  The Schmidt brand is good, it produces points, and when it works, it produces more points than the opposition.  If the McKinleys and Madigans and Conways are the future for Leinster then I’d like to see them trying it, and if they STILL fail then at least they’re young enough to improve.

But this defeat is not a disaster.  We have dropped to 4th but that slide could, and if we return to the style we’re comfortable with should, be reversed after our upcoming home games against Treviso and the Scarlets.

We can’t expect either side to lay down and die for us at the RDS, but we should at least expect the calibre of rugby we’ve grown accustomed to this season from Leinster rugby.

IRELAND-22 FRANCE-25

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TROIS ESSAIS Á UN

At full-time, albeit with a few pints on me, I put this result down to “knock-on gremlins”.  It’s as though there’s some kind of switch that controls Ireland’s ability to produce and it can’t remain in the “on” position for more than five minutes at a time.

Now I know stats aren’t everything in sport, but they do give you a sense of how a match went once you focus on the right ones.

And I know my headline reads “three tries to one”, but to get to the heart of what happened at the Aviva Stadium yesterday, you need to go a little deeper and the following bit of info sums it up for me.

Total Irish phases in French 22 just before Heaslip try (pic) = 25. Total French phases in Irish 22 for entire match = SIX.  Total points from those visits into our 22 = ZERO.

I don’t know about you but that tells me our defence was as solid as it has ever been.

So how did the French put 25 points on the board?

Poor discipline in the forwards, strict application of the “not releasing” laws by Dave Pearson, immaculate place-kicking from Morgan Parra and one, yes just the ONE missed tackle by Gordon D’Arcy.

OK – so in the most part we did well when they had the ball and whenever we gave them a sniff, they took their chance.  Fine.

Now we get to the main question : Why didn’t we put more than 25 points on the board ourselves?

Well the knock-ons are what will grab the headlines and definitely had us pulling our hair out while watching, but things weren’t quite right in other areas, like situational play-calling, team selections and use of the bench.

I was watching the match in Sinnotts with some friends, and one of them, Tom Power, made a good observation regarding our lineouts when this match was done and dusted. 

First one we had, Best threw to O’Connell at 2 and it was a clean take.  Now of course you can’t do that ALL the time, but it was the last time we did it, and after a couple of losses at 4, towards the end of the game when we were gifted an attacking position outside the French 22, we threw long for the first time and it went nowhere and yet another chance went a-begging.  Why, Tom wondered, didn’t we throw to 2 more often?

On the selection side of things, I was hoping O’Leary wouldn’t start, yet he did, and the ball was STILL shockingly too slow from the rucks, but he did manage what he does best, ie barrelling over the line for a try.  Personally I’d prefer Stringer’s quicker ball usage to one try that probably would have been scored by someone else anyway, but it seems Tomás is Declan’s man.

And as for the half-back combinations, well I’ll never understand Kidney’s decisions there.  O’Gara did some good things when he came on, but he also did some bad.  And Sexton wasn’t exactly flawless but his missed conversion came right after he got a clatter and O’Leary’s slow ball MUST be a factor in the running game being off kilter.  But after two whole matches refusing to go with an all-Leinster pairing that has been so successful in the Heineken Cup, it’s pointless trying to second guess the coach so I won’t bother.

Plus you have the likes of Leo Cullen and Sean Cronin chucked onto the pitch with the clock is in the high 70s.  I would’ve thought that’s something you only do at schoolboy level with the un-talented kids you feel sorry for, not players of their calibre.  Who knows…if Cronin had been on for the entire final quarter and had the speed of the game he may have held that last pass and our analysis would be a lot different.

Now it’s time for the paragraph where I talk about the opposition.  And normally, when my team has lost, I say something like “I don’t want to take any credit away from them, blah, blah…”  Only this time, I can’t say that. France were at best average.  We had them on the back foot from the kick-off then extended a helping hand to get them back onto the front foot.  And they STILL found ways to give us last minute chances to pinch the spoils.

As Irish fans we can look at this two ways…either we can assume the team is going to suffer the same wastefulness every week from now until the World Cup OR we can give them the benefit of the doubt and assume Declan & his brains trust are playing the “long game”.

Munster’s lunchtime defeat in Treviso reminded me yet again of Leinster’s thrashing out there in September and just how bad things looked for the province at the time.  THEN I think of where they are now.  It’s a lot of the same players, folks.  And they’re trying to adapt their game to new law interpretations in time for the World Cup.  If that’s what Kidney is at, we can hardly expect him to abandon everything now and start again.

So more than likely there will be very few changes to the side to play at Murrayfield in two weeks.  I wouldn't be surprised to see both D’Arcy and O’Leary still there.  If there were to be any casualties it would probably be in the back three, but not Luke Fitzgerald; even though I don’t think he deserved his 15 jersey in the “team of the round” (I’d have given it to Sean Lamont).  Although both Earls and McFadden did well, we badly need a fit Tommy Bowe to be able to join the line.

I still think the Triple Crown is irrelevant these days, but the way our schedule works out it’s there to be won, plus we could TECHNICALLY still win the Championship although an England-spoiler role looks more likely.

To achieve any of that, those goddam passes are going to have to stick.

Also this weekend…

ENGLAND 59-13 ITALY

Martin Johnson’s men really showed Ireland how to put away the Italians at Twickers today, and in fact could have had another three or four tries with all the chances they had. Italy left their A-game back in Rome, particularly in the tackling department, and were brushed aside by England’s tight organisation and slick offloading. Ashton of course will make the headlines with his four tries, but Flood was chief orchestrator. I wouldn’t go hanging white and red ribbons on the trophy just yet, however – they’ll top the table for the next 2 weeks but have sterner tests to come.

SCOTLAND 6-24 WALES

No match at this level of rugby should be decided by the team who took more advantage of their opponents’ mistakes before half-time, yet this one was. First, the hapless Parks was so slow with an early clearance it was blocked by a prop, then Wales helped themselves to sixteen first-quarter points. In the second, after Phillips fluffed an easy catch and TWO of his team-mates saw yellow, the home side could only muster 3 in reply. It was like whenever someone did something good, they felt they had to immediately cock-up to restore balance. Painful to watch throughout.

Leinster-21 Aironi-16

ISA NOT SO BAD!

When I started this blog I made a little promise to myself that when writing up a match against an Italian team I’d go out of my way to avoid headlines which made any reference to Joe Dolce’s “Whassa Matta You”.

Sadly, now that Aironi & Treviso are in the Magners League, I’ll have to go back on it, especially when the utility back plays so well and hands me the pun on a plate!

Naturally our focus should be on the next generation of Irish stars when Leinster play during a Six Nations campaign, but they still need the glue Nacewa provides to hold them together.  The two missed kicks can be forgiven (the first came after he got a clatter and the second was from the corner) but particularly in the second half he was at the heart of everything positive from the home side, and his mercurial “catch by the touchline on his own 22, stay in play, then kick to touch on opposite 22” was the best of a long list of heroic contributions by last night’s Man of the Match.

Overall, the match bore many resemblances to that in Rome last Saturday.  An Irish team fancied to beat an Italian one struggled to do so, having gone behind and relying on a strong start to the second half to get their momentum going.

And as for the performances of the Leinster younglings, we had the good, the bad and the downright ugly.

Luckily it was mostly good.  David Kearney particularly impressed me, and not just by the way he finished his match-winning try whilst being relieved of his shorts. Niall Morris also had a good outing with a try AND a try-saving tackle, with O’Malley, skipper Ruddock and (albeit briefly) McKinley also doing well.

The bad was from Ian Madigan, whose inadequacies were laid bare by the visitors.  Two poor clearances cost us a total of ten points, and what’s more I’ve seen players his size stop someone like Nick Williams before yet he was bulldozed out of it.  Don’t mean to be too hard on the Rock 10 though, he has plenty of time to improve.

Thing is though, it’s a high standard being set at Leinster these days and when assessing a youngster you have to ask yourself : “would I be confident of them doing the business in the Heineken Cup?” and Mads fell short on the night.

Also bad, but in this case bad luck, fell to poor Brendan Macken,  After impressive showings for Leinster A and Ireland Under 20 it was an all-too-brief debut for the senior team and hopefully his broken collar bone will heal soon.

Now for the “ugly”….Paul O’Donoghue’s display.  I really rated him when I first saw him in the AIB final in 2009 but at this level he seems shockingly slow from the base of the ruck, and I mean “slower-than-O’Leary” slow.  It was his errant pass that put Aironi on our line and eventually led to their try, and not long afterwards he chucked it straight at Erasmus who really should have added a second in the corner.

Now of COURSE, I have to hand it to Aironi for making this such a contest.  Branded a “rag-tag fugitive fleet” by a witty tweeter beforehand, they’d have been forgiven for keeping the shutters down with a 10-man game throughout to keep it tight, but instead they weren’t shy of the odd chip n chase and really put it up to us.  This was their first ever Magners League point on the road and had they not missed a couple of easy kicks they may have gotten more.

And after the “drive for five” try drought by Munster, JUST how ironic was it that Nick Williams got their more-than-deserved touchdown?

In yet more irony, on what was labelled “referees night” thanks to a Q&A session afterward by Alan Lewis & Alain Rolland, it has to be said Nigel Owens had a shocker.  Unless it was his intention to ignore Aironi’s repeated offside transgressions in the second half, in which case he had a blinder! And in case you think my bias got the better of me, I was seated RIGHT on their 22, and lost count of the times they were in our forwards’ faces too early.

But let this match be remembered by the positives…four league points, up to second in the league, home record still intact, and in the most part impressive showings by the provinces’ future stars.

All in all an enjoyable Thursday night out for my son and I.