Leinster overcome sloppy start to edge past Munster
GETTING THERE: Leinster's Jordan Larmour scores a try despite the efforts of Munster's Alex Kendellen
Almost 50,000 punters punters filed into the Aviva Stadium on Lansdowne Road in the expectation that this storied rivalry was now back to something like its fervent best after too many seasons of Leinster dominance.
It didn’t disappoint as a contest with the home team ultimately overcoming a sloppy start and a ten-point deficit to pull clear after a brilliantly engaging if imperfect 80 minutes on what was a frigid but dry Saturday evening.
Leo Cullen will take the win mindful of the many shortcomings hidden in the scoreline and the four match points earned. It is, nonetheless, a measure of revenge for last year’s surprise URC semi-final defeat to their neighbours at this same address.
Graham Rowntree will rue the inability to garner something more than a point after their lightning opening. For him, this will bear shades of their experience in Belfast a fortnight earlier when they led Ulster 14-3 early on and left for home with a loss.
Similar but not the same.
The reigning league champions were much better here than in the Kingspan but the six points they managed in the last 68 minutes were never likely to be sufficient against a Leinster side boasting 14 of their Ireland World Cup contributors from the off.
Munster’s opening try was up there with the best seen at Lansdowne Road in modern times with Simon Zebo finding the gap in midfield and Calvin Nash feeding Antoine Frisch whose quick feet and hands put Craig Casey on course for the try line.
The scrum-half is small in stature but he stood tall in fending off Ross Byrne to touch down in the corner and the damage done to Leinster was exacerbated by injury to, and subsequent loss of, their out-half and the conversion from Jack Crowley.
A Crowley penalty extended the lead to ten after 12 minutes and the visitors were causing all sorts of problems with their varied attack, clever footwork in contact, soft hands, offloads and challenging angles of attack and support lines.
Leinster were the polar opposite. Five times they made their way into the Munster 22 and they had nothing to show for any of their probes. They were laboured in possession, spilling balls and firing passes to the back shoulder far too often.
Munster were playing their part in those frustrations, not always legally.
Rory Scannell was sent to the sinbin at the start of the second quarter for killing an attack on his own line but Leinster’s first try owed nothing to their own creativity and everything to Munster’s largesse while down a man.
Tadhg Beirne really shouldn’t have tried the offload in such traffic and he paid dearly for it with Jamison Gibson-Park kicking on the free ball and winning the chase to collect and swan-dive over the chalk. Seven points from nothing.
Now the tide began to turn.
Frawley was settling impressively into the pivot, his ability to find a break and deliver an offload giving him a real point of difference to Byrne, and his generalship was equally slick as the half went on and the hosts found their feet.
Their second try came five minutes before the interval with Dan Sheehan scoring his 30th for Leinster. Like so many before it, this came off the back of a lineout and subsequent maul. Frawley’s second conversion left them 14-10 to the good.
Munster must have been kicking themselves in the sheds given their obvious superiority for that opening quarter but they will have known too that Leinster were still misfiring even as they managed to turn things around.
Most of the next ten minutes was spent between the two 22s but points were at a premium in the second-half even when one or other found their way that bit closer to the posts. The only score of the third quarter was a Crowley penalty to leave it 14-13.
Leinster’s first-half failings were returning again, Cullen’s side being unable to profit from two promising punches deep in to enemy territory with Tadhg Furlong spilling five metres out and John Hodnett jackling a minute or two later.
They eventually found a way.
The pressure was building for a good three minutes when Jordan Larmour was fed wide on the right. Shane Daly missed his tackle and so did Zebo, who was hobbling badly at the time, and Frawley followed up by nailing the conversion.
That left eight points in it with 13 minutes to go and, while Crowley narrowed that gap with a three-pointer six minutes from time, that was only enough to earn them a losing bonus point.
They deserved that at least.
H Keenan; J Larmour, G Ringrose, R Henshaw, J O’Brien; R Byrne, J Gibson-Park; A Porter, D Sheehan, T Furlong; J McCarthy, J Ryan; J Conan, J van der Flier, C Doris.
: C Frawley for Byrne (8); S Penny for van der Flier, M Ala’alatoa for Furlong and R Kelleher for Sheehan (all 60); R Molony for Ryan (68); J Boyle for Porter and B Murphy for Gibson-Park (73); J Culhane for Doris (81).
S Zebo; C Nash, A Frisch, R Scannell, S Daly; J Crowley, C Casey; J Loughman, D Barron, S Archer; J Kleyn, T Beirne; T Ahern, J Hodnett, G Coombes.
S McCarthy for Nash (22-31) and for Zebo (68); C Murray for Casey (51); D Kilcoyne for Loughman (53); J Ryan for Archer (58); A Kendellen for Hodnett (62); B Gleeson for Kleyn (69); T Butler for Scannell (74).
C Busby (IRFU).
