Leinster 13
Munster 3
ON AND ON they go, into their ninth Pro14 final in 11 years, adding a familiar victim to their growing list of scalps. At this stage, thoughts of another double and an unbeaten season are justified. Leinster are at that level.
But you have to wonder what difference the presence of Munster’s injured quartet of stars – RG Snyman, Jean Kleyn, Joey Carbery and Dave Kilcoyne – might have made here, especially when you reflect on a key period in the second-half, when the score was 10-3, and Carbery’s replacement, JJ Hanrahan, lined up a couple of penalties.
Munster needed the scores. Hanrahan missed both.
Leinster didn’t look back. They soon had a chance of their own, Johnny Sexton nailing it, pushing their lead out to 10 points. Still, Munster came at them and were much the better team in the closing 10 minutes. But Leinster held firm. Even on nights when they fail to really click, they find a way to win.
Still, before we add further detail, there was something distinctly odd about this occasion – the absence of fans milling outside Ballsbridge’s pubs, of touts haggling people for business, of burger vans clogging up the roads. You even found yourself getting nostalgic for a traffic jam as you strolled uninterrupted towards the Aviva.
And from the upper tier of the Aviva’s west stand, you could only imagine what the atmosphere would have been like if 2020 hadn’t played havoc with people’s lives and this place had have been packed tonight instead of empty. The silence when the PA man switched off the music just as Munster walked onto the field for kick-off was surreal.
A couple of hours later, when the final whistle went, those same Munster men limped back to their dressing room bruised, drained, and annoyed. They had put up a good show. They never gave in. They fell narrowly short. But that won’t make them feel better as the scale of this loss becomes clear. It is nine years now since they last won a trophy and if that drought is to end then they need all their key men fit and on the field. To add to their woes, Andrew Conway limped off just after half-time.
And yet initially, so many of the little battles went Munster’s way – from Peter O’Mahony’s outrageously well-timed leap to collect Johnny Sexton’s kick-off, through to their front row holding firm in the first couple of scrums. Momentum slowly built, JJ Hanrahan holding his nerve when presented with a fifth-minute opportunity to nail the opening penalty of the game.
Behind, Leinster fought back immediately, camping inside the Munster half for the next 10 minutes – winning a couple of penalties of their own. Yet they did nothing with them – opting to kick for territory with the first of those, before miscommunication saw Ronan Kelleher’s darts miss the board.
A few minutes later it was Sexton who was off target – his long-range penalty ending narrowly wide of the posts. Psychologically these little success stories seemed to add layers to Munster’s self-belief. They’d win a couple more penalties in the following 10 minutes, neither of them within Hanrahan’s range.
But still. They were on the front foot, applying pressure, playing the game on their terms. Not for long, though. You only had to hear the roar of the Leinster players’ shouts when Hugo Keenan nailed Conor Murray with a crunching 23rd minute tackle to know they too were relishing this challenge.
They’d subsequently show it, too – increasing the tempo from this moment on. They got on top in the scrum. What’s more, they started to put width on their attack, stretching the Munster defence, eventually forcing Keith Earls to backpedal furiously as he failed to hold Sexton’s crosskick.
He’d pay for that mistake, the subsequent scrum eventually leading to a penalty, the subsequent penalty to another line-out, which Kelleher didn’t mess up this time. Even better, he bravely got hold of the ball from the maul and nudged forward, under severe pressure, to touch down. Try, Leinster.
The roll of the dice saw their numbers come up. Kelleher accepted the challenge Sexton had posed him, relaxed and delivered a perfect throw to Jack Conan at the front of the line out. Then when the ball emerged, the hooker seized it with a predator’s relish, to score.
In so many ways this was the game’s decisive moment, because the boldness of the gamble had highlighted the deep-layered confidence that exists within these Leinster players. They knew – when deep inside the Munster half – that they had to back themselves.
They were right to.
A Sexton penalty just before half-time stretched Leinster’s lead to seven and even though this was a far from insurmountable lead, you just couldn’t see Munster having enough depth to overcome it.
The opening 15 minutes of the second half backed up this hunch, Leinster edging proceedings, Munster’s discomfort worsening when Andrew Conway was forced off with an injury.
But they kept battling, winning a scrum penalty on 55 minutes, celebrating that victory as if it could be decisive.
But it wasn’t.
They didn’t fold in the final quarter. Instead they were the better team. The final minutes saw them camp in the Leinster 22. But you aren’t going to win trophies if you only manage to score three points. That is a harsh truth they don’t need to be told.
Leinster scorers:
Tries: Kelleher
Conversions: Sexton 1 from 1
Penalties: Sexton 2 from 3
Munster scorers:
Penalties: Hanrahan 1 from 3
LEINSTER: Jordan Larmour (Rory O’Loughlin ’46); Hugo Keenan, Garry Ringrose, Robbie Henshaw, James Lowe; Johnny Sexton (captain) (Ross Byrne ’67), Luke McGrath (Jamison Gibson-Park ’60); Cian Healy (Ed Byrne ’55), Ronan Kelleher (Sean Cronin ’63), Andrew Porter (Michael Bent ’63); Devin Toner, Scott Fardy (Ryan Baird ’53); Caelan Doris, Will Connors (Josh van der Flier ’74), Jack Conan.
MUNSTER: Shane Daly; Andrew Conway (Rory Scannell ’46), Chris Farrell, Damian de Allende, Keith Earls; JJ Hanrahan, Conor Murray (Craig Casey ’71); Jeremy Loughman (James Cronin ’57), Niall Scannell (Kevin O’Byrne ’67), Stephen Archer (John Ryan ’51); Tadhg Beirne, Billy Holland (Fineen Wycherley ’57); Peter O’Mahony (captain), Jack O’Donoghue (Chris Cloete ’51), CJ Stander.
Referee: Andrew Brace.
