LAST SATURDAY AT the Aviva was a breath of fresh air for many of those watching, and many of those playing.
Leinster opened up in attack and tore Wasps apart at times with their intelligent and largely accurate brand of rugby.
Though there were occasions when they got themselves in trouble, it was an afternoon to revive anyone’s rugby spirit, a genuine joy to watch.
[image alt="Sean O’Brien" src="http://cdn.thejournal.ie/media/2017/04/sean-obrien-186-630x386.jpg" width="630" height="386" class="alignnone" /end]
The offloads were present from the opening minutes and Leinster ended up throwing 16 of them – only Saracens offloaded more in the quarter-finals, with 20 against Glasgow.
Leo Cullen’s side created six clean linebreaks and operated with width for almost the entirety of the game. There are certainly strides of improvement to make before the Champions Cup semi-final against Clermont on 23 April, but this was exciting stuff.
It was interesting to see Ireland internationals opening up their games, with the likes of Robbie Henshaw looking for the offload more than had been the case in the Six Nations. Sean O’Brien was another who looked to be freed up by Leinster’s game plan and he delivered his best performance for some time.
I suppose you’ve more of a license with the way we are playing now with Leinster than we do at international level,” said O’Brien yesterday. “The risk at international level is probably greater in terms of if the ball is on the ground, they get the scraps and it could be a score.
“Whereas we saw at the weekend we went down their end and they came back right into our 22 again. You recover a little bit easier at that level.
“It’s just another notch down but, yeah, it’s nice to go into that environment and know the way you are going to play and know that you are going to have a crack and see where it takes you.”
Given that so many of this Leinster team are Ireland internationals and the Wasps team was also full of Test-level players, it’s interesting that O’Brien suggests that this brand of rugby wouldn’t quite work in the international game.
He believes the risks are greater at Test level, although he also says that different coaches have different game plans.
[image alt="Sean O'Brien" src="http://cdn.thejournal.ie/media/2017/04/sean-obrien-187-630x404.jpg" width="630" height="404" class="alignnone" /end]
“It’s different,” said O’Brien. “Different coaches have different game plans, obviously, and they way they want you to play.
“It’s just different, Joe [Schmidt] is different than what Stuart [Lancaster] or Leo would be, same in the other provinces. So, you stick to what they want you to do.
“They are both effective, but probably the way we were playing the weekend is exciting rugby, but on the other end of that I think we conceded a few soft scores from ball going down on the ground and bits and pieces.
“They’re areas you can really tidy up on, make sure you are nailing because if that is international level, they are scores.”
O’Brien says he is “happy to do either” in terms of what his coaches are asking of him, underlining that it’s important that players can deliver on the specific game plan at hand. The Tullow man also stresses that defences in Test rugby are “definitely” better than in the club game.
He is enjoying the style of rugby with Leinster, however, and points to the influence of Stuart Lancaster as having been important in developing this approach.
“It was probably going that way, but he’s obviously come in,” said O’Brien. “He has an awful amount of experience and he’s brought a new dimension to our attack definitely in terms of just playing the unstructured stuff as well, the stuff that you face in games.
“That’s the way we’re training. He’s added an awful lot to the set-up.”
The confidence will be flowing through Leinster after their impressive win over Wasps and despite the difficulty of having to travel to Lyon for their semi-final against Clermont, O’Brien says it feels like a corner has been turned this season.
[image alt="Jonathan Sexton celebrates with his son Luca and team mate Sean O'Brien" src="http://cdn.thejournal.ie/media/2017/04/jonathan-sexton-celebrates-with-his-son-luca-and-team-mate-sean-obrien-2-630x448.jpg" width="630" height="448" class="alignnone" /end]
“Yeah, the last few years weren’t great obviously, in terms of what we wanted to do in Europe, but I think our squad now is stronger than ever,” said O’Brien.
“That’s developed over the last number of years, a number of guys coming through, us probably taking a bit more ownership of the whole thing, the senior players, the structures are in place.
“There’s a good coaching team there, a young coaching team too; Leo and Girv [Dempsey] and John Fogarty are relatively new to coaching.
“They’re after gaining a lot of experience in the last year or two and with Stuart coming in now it’s just taken a bit of pressure off them and us, I think, as players, to give us that free reign of all-out attack.”
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