AT THE RDS LAST NIGHT, IT WAS A STORY OF TWO HALF HAS. In the first, a heavily favored Sale Sharks team arrived in Dublin, and Leinster were misfiring and under pressure, trailing 11–13 at the half.
Although they have a strong squad, the English team traveled across the Irish Sea with a depleted lineup for this round two match.
You wouldn’t have known it for the first forty minutes as they dominated a Leinster team that was having trouble getting into the game. That has appeared in a few of Leinster’s performances so far this season.
After a strong start, the visitors pulled ahead 13–3, and Leinster had two tries disallowed due to TMO checks. In the RDS stands, there was more relief than joy when Josh van der Flier eventually scored at the end of the first half. Rugby statistician Russ Petty noted on X that this was the first time Leinster was behind at halftime in a Champions Cup game since the 2020 quarterfinal loss to Saracens, so the home crowd in Dublin isn’t used to things not going their way.
Throughout an imprecise forty minutes, they consistently exhibited poor execution. A six-day turnaround from the trip to La Rochelle last weekend could partially account for that, but those mistakes could cost more on a different day and against a different team.
The match that the more than 18,000 spectators at the RDS had anticipated was not this one. That changed all together after the break. Leinster showed us what kind of team they are when everything clicks during a commanding 30-minute stretch. They scored four consecutive tries to take the lead and went on to win 37–27 with bonus points.
In the final minutes, everything came apart once more: Charlie Ngatai’s injury forced Leinster to play with 13 men, and Hugo Keenan was yellow-carded as Sale scored two late tries.
Overall, it was a bonus-point victory, but it had turned out to be a more difficult game than expected.
Leinster head coach Leo Cullen stated, “Even though they (Sale) left some players behind, they came with a plan and tried to frustrate us and were trying to frustrate us in the contact area.”
That’s how it was; we weren’t quite accurate in the first half, but it was good that we scored at the end and that we controlled the remaining minutes before halftime.
We were virtually in control when Sale had a man in the bin, some of our bench options had a good effect, and we lost Hugo (Keenan) to the bin. Sadly, we also lost all of our bench, which may be my fault because Charlie (Ngatai) gets hurt.
We had 13 players left at the end of the last five minutes, and we gave up two tries, which is annoying given the nature of this competition.
When it comes to seedings, every point counts—not just in your own pool, but in all the other pools as well.
“We’ll see if it catches up with us.”
Even though it wasn’t a flawless night’s work, Leinster finished first in Pool 4 going into Christmas.
Following their thrilling victory over La Rochelle, the reigning champions, last weekend, the province now has nine points before playing the Leicester Tigers (away) and Stade Francais (at home) in January. With five points at the moment, Leicester will play Stade Francais today.
Even though Cullen’s team has won eight straight games since losing their URC opener away to Glasgow in October, Leinster hasn’t always played at their dominant best during the first half of the season.
Though there is still much space for improvement, you are still in the lead. It’s not a bad place to be by any means.
Cullen continued, “I don’t know if we played at our best (against Sale), but that’s the challenge for us.
“We’ve completed this round of games. We’ve succeeded in winning eight straight games.
Sale is a very tenacious group. There are a lot of strong guys there. We (said) all week that they would come with a plan, a strong kicking game, and they would try to frustrate us, even though they left players at home.
Although the province is expected to have home advantage in the round of 16, Cullen refuted any notion that he was satisfied with their position following the first round of pool play.
“You wouldn’t use the word “content” very often in professional sports, is it?
