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Untidy Leinster set up La Rochelle quarter-final after beating Leicester

By PA
Hugo Keenan - PA

Leinster’s Champions Cup title challenge gathered further pace with a 36-22 win over Leicester at the Aviva Stadium as they locked in a repeat of the last two finals against La Rochelle.

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The French giants, who edged out the Stormers in Cape Town, will return to Dublin for next week’s heavyweight quarter-final, 11 months on from retaining their European crown in fairytale fashion.

Having last lifted the trophy in 2018, a fiercely-determined Leinster cancelled out Handre Pollard’s fourth-minute try as Jamison Gibson-Park’s running off the ball was rewarded with a first-half hat-trick.

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Jake White on Leinster experience

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Jake White on Leinster experience

Trailing 22-10 at half-time, Leicester capitalised on James Lowe’s sin-binning for a deliberate knock-on as former Munster prop James Cronin was on the end of a 45th-minute maul.

Robbie Henshaw’s intercept effort four minutes later effectively sealed the result while replacements Jack Conan and Charlie Clare exchanged late scores in front of an attendance of 40,775.

Leicester repeated their fast start from January’s fourth-round clash, with Cronin and Jasper Wiese combining on a midfield break.

Leinster Leicester
Jordan Larmour – PA
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Playing with a penalty advantage, Springbok Pollard was released by Dan Kelly’s neat offload to crash over and convert.

Player-of-the-match Gibson-Park soon took centre stage, though, as he was prominent in the lead-up to a Ross Byrne penalty and then picked up a brace of tries in an 11-minute spell.

The Ireland scrum half raced over in the 12th minute after Dan Sheehan had sprung Joe McCarthy in between two defenders. Byrne converted and then watched his half-back partner take a return pass from Sheehan to score on the left.

Ollie Hassell-Collins got a chance to stretch his legs, leading to a 28th-minute Pollard penalty, but Leicester’s leaky defence coughed up a third try in response.

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Jamie Osborne’s sharp attacking line opened the visitors up and the supporting Gibson-Park broke Freddie Steward’s tackle and darted around Jack van Poortvliet to cruise in under the posts. Byrne’s extras put 12 points between the sides.

Tigers were far from finished as an early second-half scrum penalty – a strong aspect of their game – was followed by Lowe’s yellow card and Cronin was quickly driven over, with Pollard unfortunate to hit the near post with the conversion.

Points Flow Chart

Leinster win +14
Time in lead
70
Mins in lead
8
86%
% Of Game In Lead
10%
18%
Possession Last 10 min
82%
7
Points Last 10 min
7

Dan McKellar’s side promised more, with Hanro Liebenberg forcing a turnover, but Kelly’s midfield pass was picked off by Henshaw for a sucker-punch score from halfway, converted by Byrne for a 29-15 scoreline.

Knocks picked up by fly-half Byrne and Cian Healy added to Leinster’s injury concerns but Conan, having missed out on an earlier try, did manage to finish off a smart break from Ryan Baird.

Clare had the final say, profiting from a mistimed lineout from the Irish province who know they cannot afford to repeat the same errors when the defending champions come to town.

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J
JW 14 minutes ago
'Razor's conservatism is in danger of halting New Zealand's progress'

BB didn't improve over the years, why should Jordan?


You've lost the plot of you think Love should be the fullback. That is waaay more out of leftfield than anything else I've heard.


I'm not sure Jordan can remain in the team either way. What it actually sounds like you're saying, is you want a balanced approach Jordan playing fullback next year, that he gets say 6 or 8 games through to the RC and should be looked at being in immediate contention with someone like Love, or whoever else, has played well, for the November tour.


I'm absolutely down with that. Jordan is going to have a full SR season for the first time next year, to work on facets of his game that he's never had analyzed before because of only being selected on the wing by the All Blacks. That change is huge. You can not underestimate the learning experience that this year would have been and how valuable (touch wood) and full season will be actually targeting what he felt were work ons, rather than just making stuff up or trying to improve on his strengths.


So, first of all, we should expect him to return better than how he finished, and then we'd need to see some further improvement (if it he doesn't just immediatly smash it) over July and the RC. That doesn't mean we need to see him doing what you say. He can get on great at the top level with a very limited kicking and passing game (which would be a huge improvement over BB who had a limited and innacurate kick/pass game), we need to see him comfortable with he can do in making the right decisions first and foremost. So I'd be very happy to see him working on his strength in contact under high balls and covering the backline, not see him kicking the ball down defenders throats, and trying more interplay on his returns. What I can't see, is him improving as a right winger. All his wing player success is in the style of a fullback. Probably only pure speed (working really hard to get his body/speed back to 100) would help him imo, and that's obviously a hindrance to his chances as a fullback.


TLDR; I think the poor counter attacking ability of the All Blacks has been one of the key reasons their standards have dipped over the years, and what you're suggesting is promoting that continuing. No thanks. This is not a discussion of specific players like you're making out, but of your mentality of the ABs essentially continuing with the dual playmaker setup.

219 Go to comments
O
OJohn 1 hour ago
Will overseas selection make the difference for British and Irish Lions?

The trouble with appointing a coach from one state that is not the Tahs, is that the p.... at the Tahs will start weedling away immediately on ways to undermine the non Tah coach.


It's what the private school toffs do. They have a born to rule mentality, even tho they are complete failures. That is why they will only tolerate Tah coaches or weak kiwis they know they can control. A kiwi on a million Australian dollars a year will do anything the largest franchise in Australia tells him to do. He's only here for the money.


That's why Ewen McKenzie was the ideal candidate, even tho Hooper and Beale still set out straight away to undermine him to get Cheika installed but the next best alternative is to have a group of coaches from some of the franchises, except the Tahs, (not the Western Force with kiwi Cron - who is hopeless), to keep the Tahs in their place. The Wallabies must also not have more than 3 Tah players in the squad. Otherwise they will start scheming again under instruction from the NSW administration. The Tahs have spent the last 20 years undermining the Wallabies to get more players than they deserved in the squad. Their NSW egos are more important to them than the Wallabies.


I can't see why a triumverate of Super Rugy coaches can't coach the Wallabies too. I could include MacKellar in there as well but he has shown himself to select on favoritism rather than ability based on the ridiculous number of sub standard Brumbies who got a game under Rennie. He's not much of a Queenslander but the Tahs will stab in the back in a flash too eventually.

74 Go to comments
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