IT WAS A tale of two halves at the RDS last night. In the first, Leinster were inaccurate and under pressure, trailing 11-13 at the half-time break against a Sale Sharks side who travelled to Dublin as heavy underdogs.
The English side have a fine squad but sent a weakened selection across the Irish Sea for this round two clash.
For the first 40 minutes, you wouldn’t have known it as they got stuck into a Leinster team who struggled to settle into the game. That’s been something of a theme across some of Leinster’s performances this season.
On the back of a bright start, the visitors moved into a 13-3 lead while Leinster saw two tries crossed off after TMO checks. When Josh van der Flier finally went over on the stroke of half-time, it was relief more than elation in the RDS stands. The home fans aren’t used to things not going their way in Dublin – as rugby statistician Russ Petty highlighted on X, this was the first time since the 2020 quarter-final defeat to Saracens that Leinster were trailing at half-time in a Champions Cup game.
Across an inaccurate 40 minutes they were repeatedly sloppy in their execution. A six-day turnaround from last weekend’s trip to La Rochelle might explain some of that but on another day, against another team, those errors could prove more costly.
This was not the match the 18,000-plus who turned out at the RDS had expected. After the break, that all changed. Across a dominant 30-minute spell, Leinster reminded us of the force they can be when it all comes together, running in four unanswered tries as they eventually powered to a 37-27 bonus-point win.
It briefly unravelled again in the closing minutes – Hugo Keenan picking up a yellow card as Sale ran in two late tries, Leinster left playing with 13 men after Charlie Ngatai was forced off with an injury.
The bottom line was a bonus-point win but it had proved a tougher outing than anticipated.
“Even though they (Sale) left some players behind, they came with a plan and tried to frustrate us and were trying to frustrate us in the contact area,” said Leinster head coach Leo Cullen.
“That’s what it was like, we weren’t quite accurate in the first-half and it was good that we scored at the end of the first-half and how we managed that period either side of half-time was good.
“Sale had a man in the bin, some of our bench options had a decent impact and we were pretty much on top and then unfortunately then we lose all our bench and, maybe that’s on me, because Charlie (Ngatai) gets injured and we lose Hugo (Keenan) to the bin.
“We finished the last five minutes with 13 players and concede two tries which is frustrating, because you know the way this competition is.
Every point can matter when it comes down to the seedings, it’s not just your own pool but it’s all the other pools as well.
“We’ll see if it comes back to bite us.”
Not a perfect night’s work, but enough to leave Leinster top of Pool 4 heading into Christmas.
After last weekend’s impressive win away to defending champions La Rochelle, the province now have nine points on the board ahead of January games against Stade Francais (home) and Leicester Tigers (away) – Leicester currently sit second on five points and take on Stade Francais today.
And while Leinster have not always been at their imperious best across the opening half of the season, Cullen’s side have now won eight games on the bounce since losing their URC opener away to Glasgow in October.
Plenty of room for improvement, but still leading the chasing pack. By any measure, it’s not a bad place to be.
“I’m not sure if we were at our very best (against Sale), but that’s the challenge for us,” Cullen added.
“We’ve got through this block of games. We’ve managed to win eight games in a row.
“Sale are a very dogged team. They have a lot of tough men in there. Even though they left players at home, we (said) all week that they would come with a plan, a strong kicking game, and they would try and frustrate us.”
The province are on course to land home advantage in the round of 16, but Cullen dismissed any suggestion he was content with their standing after the opening batch of pool games.
“Content is not a word you’d use very often in professional sport, is it?”
