2 weeks Ago By Irishexaminer.com
Leinster 24 Emirates Lions 6 Kudos to the Lions who refused to be cowed into early submission by Leinster on Saturday evening. If they didn’t score a try themselves then the South Africans still left their mark on hosts who failed to claim a bonus point for the first time this season. A test of that nature was no harm for Leinster who had hauled a maximum of 25 points from their first five games of the URC, and who now enter the November break with a comfortable lead at the top of the table.
There is a temptation to say that this grind was equally timely for the fact that fans can be turned off by a sequence of processions, but then Leinster’s season in exile from a soon-to-be-refurbished RDS looks to be a success regardless of events between the lines. A crowd of 20,945 turned up to see this game against a side that was, admittedly, second on the ladder approaching the weekend. Over 18,000 visited the Aviva for their first home game against the Dragons and then there was that 81,000 bumper for Munster at Croke Park.
All told, that makes for an average of over 40,000 souls per home game for the province this season. It’s an astonishing number and it speaks volumes for the appetite for entertainment at a decent price in decent surroundings that exists in and around the capital. It begs, too, the question as to why Leinster don’t augment that further.
This next week is a quiet one in rugby with the URC put into hibernation and Ireland’s opening autumn fixture against the All Blacks another 11 days distant. The only show in town will be Munster’s meeting with an All Blacks XV in Limerick. If Leinster have cornered an impressive market in Dublin – think of the reported €1.
7m they cleared for the Munster match – then their southern counterparts have been most active in welcoming tourists from the major SANZAAR nations in recent times. Would Leinster not want a piece of that pie, too? “There are some challenges in where we play games at the moment because we are out of the RDS and playing here,” said head coach Leo Cullen. “Listen, I don’t think we would be allowed play here [in the Aviva] and then is the commercial payoff there? “There is a bit of risk within that so all the conversations have taken place, yes.
” There are other considerations besides. Leinster will lose 17 players to Andy Farrell’s Ireland squad as of today and they have a pair of upcoming interprovincial ‘A’ games against Connacht and Munster that look to be more within their remaining roster’s wheelhouse. Cullen was also conscious of the sheer workload being placed on the Leinster coaching and supports staffs.
Once the November break is over it will be full steam ahead into and through the Christmas and New Year period. Something needs giving somewhere. “Maybe we could take it around the country but are there floodlights? There are 101 questions come into it then.
If there are no floodlights then where do you play it? Does it clash with an international game? So there are some many variables there.” Leinster have faced Chile, Saracens and Bath in recent Test windows and, to be fair, they are good at dishing out the game time through the regular season with 47 players having featured for them now in the first half-dozen URC games to date. Cullen didn’t bear the look of a man about to break out the bubbly after a sixth straight win.
Their run of end-of-season losses this past three campaigns is evidence enough that this sort of form at this stage of the journey only amounts to so much. The Lions were a stubborn opponent, restricting their hosts to just three tries, from Josh van der Flier, Caelan Doris and an injury-time penalty try, and the Leinster head coach remarked after that they still had plenty to work on. “We’re not losing the run of ourselves.
” # Leinster : H Keenan; A Osborne, H Cooney, R Henshaw, J Lowe; S Prendergast, L McGrath; M Milne, G McCarthy, R Slimani; RG Snyman, R Baird; M Deegan, J van der Flier, C Doris. Replacements: T Clarkson for Slimani and A Porter for Milne (both 46); C Foley for McGrath and R Byrne for Prendergast (both 64); B Deeny for Baird (68); J Culhane for Deegan (70); S Smyth for McCarthy and C Tector for Henshaw (both 79). Emirates Lions: Q Horn; R Kriel, H van Wyk, R Jonker, E van der Merwe; K Wolhuter, M van den Berg; J Schoeman, PJ Botha, A Ntlabakanye; R Schoeman, R Nothnagel; JC Pretorious, J Cairns, F Horn.
Replacements: E Cronje for Q Horn (11); F Marais for Botha, R Delport for R Schoeman and R Du Plessis for Jonker (all 61); H Pohlmann for J Schoeman, RF Schoeman for Ntlabakanye and S Nohamba for Wolhuter (all 68); R Du Plessis for Pretorious (70). Referee : C Evans (WRU)..
