Leinster Team Talk Thread (Love you Furlong time)

It was anything but comfortable - they were defending for their lives on their try line at the dying stages. Leinster made poor decisions in not taking the penalty or attempting the drop goal.

A comfortable one point win was Leinster's win in Thomond last December - where the closing 10 mins were played out with Leinster comfortably attacking in the Munster 22.

How a situation where La Rochelle are scrambling to defend (and repeatedly infringing I would argue) on their own tryline could be described as comfortable, I have no idea.

It's not adapting to interpretations - it's not being given a penalty you've clearly earned. There's very little adapting you can do in that scenario, and it's a bit trite and throwaway to just suggest that.

What would any team do in that scenario where the referee is simply not awarding penalties in a scenario where referees almost always grant penalties?

It quite clearly played absolutely into the hands of La Rochelle, and was a key contributing reason in allowing them to keep the pressure on.

For all of that La Rochelle "dominance" they were still getting relatively regularly turned over (plus other scenarios where they knocked on under pressure etc), and didn't really look like scoring a try till Colombe got over.

Go back and look at the incidents in question specifically yourself if you want to -

Look at:

(i) the penalty he gives against Henshaw in the 48th minute

(ii) the penalty he doesn't give Sheehan in the 51st minute. Sheehan is on the ball for a good 4 seconds, and Peyper never blows the whistle. It's a stonewall obvious penalty. Instead of getting the penalty, JGP box kicks off the resulting ruck, and possession goes straight back to LAR in the Leinster half.

(iii) the penalty he doesn't give JGP in the 52nd minute - after a dominant tackle from Conan around midfield. JGP is clearly on the ball for an extended period, before eventually being cleared out. This would have been a penalty with most referees, and an opportunity to have field position early in the second half in the LAR 22.

(iv) the penalty he doesn't give Henshaw in the 62nd minute - another one where Henshaw is on the ball clearly for an extended period, takes a really heavy hit from the late LAR clearers as a result, and all Leinster get for this is slow scrappy ball on or around halfway. This once again is one I think 9/10 refs give a clear and obvious penalty for.

(v) the utterly ridiculous penalty he gives against Jimmy O'Brien for contesting the kick in the air in the LAR 22 on the 62nd minute. It was absolutely a fair contest.

(vi) the penalty he gives against Caelan Doris, from which LAR kick to the corner to set up the extended end game. Doris was on his feet and on the ball again for an extended period, with no LAR cleaner there around it. It was an obvious penalty for holding on, which wasn't given. When eventually the LAR cleaners arrive, he penalises Doris.

Like it's all well and good saying Leinster didn't play the ref well, and couldn't build possession or territory, but if you watch it back, you'll notice Leinster are not faring badly in the physical exchanges for extended periods of that second half. There were dominant tackles in the 45-70 min period from multiple players, and Leinster turned them over at least 6 times (via jackals and other turnovers) during that period. But you have to be rewarded by the referee when you win a turnover, because that's what allows you to exit and build an attack in the opposition half.

Without that, any side would inevitably tire and eventually concede.

I can't believe lads are still getting their knickers in a twist over a game that happened six months ago.

Most of the recent posts on this thread is evidence of how readily people just seize onto narratives in forming their views on what happened, and they themselves then repeat those narratives, and it becomes a self-perpetuating circle.

I've attempted to provide multiple reasons in posts as to why I feel the way that game transpired, but the retort is "Well I think you're wrong, I just think Leinster were poor", , or "Leinster didn't play the referee well" and "Toulouse were tired because they played Munster the week before", and no more detailed engagement than that.

James Lowe had an awful day with the boot - he sliced some kicks badly, made poor decisions and the one really excellent kick he had in the second half he failed to identify that JGP had passed it to him from outside the 22, and it was therefore taken back.

But - he’d lost his mother who’d had a long battle with cancer just the week before so it’s natural his head wasn’t where it needed to be. He’s been an absolutely great player for Leinster, and I’m not pinning it on him, but it’s not accurate to say the kicking errors were all because of pressure - a lot of them were just bad execution.

I completely agree with this.

Some of the turnover ball in the second half was the sort of ball Leinster typically attack from, and the kicked too much of it away (poorly) that day.

Both half backs were poor and exerted very little control.

I’m not claiming Leinster played great, or that LAR didn’t deserve the win, I’m just saying the narrative that Leinster were blown away by a physically dominant LAR team and that the only solution would have been a big bruiser of a lock isn’t necessarily true.

A big lock still wasn’t going to help Leinster with their exits in that second half.

Yeah, this is a fair point. I don’t generally like speaking about referees, but I do feel it was notable in that game how he refereed the breakdown, and it was a central factor in how Leinster couldn’t exit and why Leinster tired so much.