Leinster v Munster URC Semi -Final match thread

Munster won the game on the pitch , leinster lost it in the team selection.

I expected leinster to field a front 5 of porter, Sheehan, furlong , ryan & McCarthy who would pump munster up and down the field for 50 mins then reflect on a job well done, and leinster into another final.

Absolutely shocking selection , smacks of arrogance. Surely he knew even a heavily depleted munster side would go at it hard for 80 mins and would need to be quietened in the first 20 mins.

instead the leinster front five were put under the pump in the first half and were lucky to be leading at half time. Leo Cullen should have at least had some of the aforementioned front 5 on the bench to rescue the game.

all will be forgiven in the leinster camp if they win next week, but i dont think they will have the firepower to put LR away.

it seemed to me that Leo was rewarding reserve players with starting spots in a cup semi final, forgetting it was the cup semi final.

very sloppy.

Don't agree at all. He picked a rotated team he felt was good enough to win and they almost did. Now personally I would have had a few of the first teamers on the bench but I don't think there was arrogance at all

I think the difference between the teams and not for the first time was Denis Leamy.

I think Cullen made a pragmatic decision to favour the Heinken over the URC. They lost and I don't begrudge Munster the narrow win.

In such a close match the referee played a big part and I am still curious why such a referee was given the job.

Good luck to both in the finals.

I do get the frustration. But the schedule is brutal. Week after week of knockout rugby, with no Sexton! No Henshaw or Lowe. Players needed rest, especially the international lads. If we'd gone full strenght today and won, but lost VDF or Ryan or Furlong, we'd be fecked next week. The URC would be great! But it's apparent that the heino is the goal.

Fair whack to the turnips! Best of luck to them! I'm delighted for them to accomplish this. It hurts as a Leinster fan. I think the selection was fairly good. Not too many key lads involved.

Hold on there.... this was not a full stacked Leinster team.

Casey didn't fill me with a lot of confidence today. I thought he pissed about at the back of rucks, a lot. At least once he was trying to milk a penalty and almost los the ball to a counter ruck. Slower ball may have been tactical and under orders but I thought at times with scoreboard pressure things got to him and he was ropey. Some of Munster's failures on the Leinster line were the result of poor decisions by him.

From what I recall:

Should have carded McGrath in the first half.

Missed a number of incidents of crossing in the Munster attack. It was pretty frenetic to be fair, but there were at least two obvious times it happened.

Not rewarding Leinster’s scrum dominance on a few occasions in the second half.

The penalty count was heavily in Munsters favour, and that wasn’t Murphy’s doing. The lead up to the DG was managed fantastically well by Munster. That was the winning of the game.

Agree - no one was in need of a rest after their break during the SA trip. The team wasn't as weak as some on here expected but it wasn't as strong as I hoped it would be - I thought they'd go full reverse of last week. Even saying that they came extremely close to pulling it off, despite Munster playing well, Leinster playing poorly, and so much going wrong for the team during the match.

Hopefully this is a black eye that focuses the team away from any sense of expectation that things will be easy. Munster were playing for their season today and that'll be Leinster next week. A win next week and no one will lose sleep about losing today.

Congrats Munster, you can see how much beating the Leinster B team meant to their team and fans. You're definitely improving, it looks like we'll need to sprinkle in a few more starters the next time we play a meaningful match.

I'll read the match thread later, just logged in to say I'm absolutely delighted with the result and in general with the game.

I've no idea why Frank Murphy is trending on Twitter but as I've said before the game the URC should never have put him the position he was in.

For a card happy ref I thought there were two penalties where Leinster were lucky not to get cards for cynical play, McGrath's knock on and the Leinster player on the ground tackling the Munster player, had that ball gone to the winger it was a try.

That win, aside from the obvious of putting us into the final & beating Leinster at home locks us into Tier One in next season's ERC pool draws.

The Drop Goal was something else, under the cosh to score, Leinster defending like demons, Crowley in the pocket and the pass to give him every opportunity to seal it.

Did I say I'm delighted

SUAF