THE OCCASION WAS best illustrated by Caelan Doris as he led his side back into the changing-rooms just before kick-off.
As he headed for the tunnel, Leinster skipper Doris stared up towards the Hogan Stand and beamed as he watched the last of the 82,300 fans stream into their seats.
The match was also best encapsulated by Doris who, still smiling at full-time, turned to Jack Conan at full-time and quite clearly exhaled, ‘Fuck!‘
For over an hour, this had been a Leinster performance so gutturally savage that it seemed destined to weave its way into the province’s rich European Cup tapestry. But they ceded control of the game to such an extent in the final 10 minutes that Northampton Saints almost pulled a reverse-2011 on their hosts.
It was Doris himself who had virtually the final say in a pulsating, strange encounter, his jackal-penalty — with some help from Conan — ensuring that he won’t have to spend the rest of his life being force-fed low-hanging fruit about Mayo men at Croke Park (they’ve won a fair few semi-finals there, for what it’s worth).
And well the Ballina-born back row should smile, too: that other aul’ cliché about semi-finals has become so for a reason. In the fullness of time, people remember finals. Semi-finals are only cited when you lose.
Mind you, it’s hard to imagine Leinster will plough forward to North London in three weeks’ time without first finding the answers internally as to how they almost allowed this semi to be stolen from under their nose.
At Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Leo Cullen’s side are likely to face the best rugby player to ever play the game whose formidable Toulousain outfit who will pose a plethora of different questions.
On this seismic day at Croke Park, however, it was Leinster’s own scrum-half who propelled them towards European club rugby’s showpiece on 25 May, stealing the show even from hat-trick hero James Lowe.
Northampton fullback George Furbank spoke pre-game about the need to inhibit Jamison Gibson-Park, whom Saints had clearly identified as Leinster’s key player in this semi-final.
But while he’s not quite on Antoine Dupont’s level — nor is anybody else — Gibson-Park is now a good enough scrum-half that it may be more prudent for opposition to plan around him rather than plan for him.
The 32-year-old tortured Northampton in the early going, inspiring the two scores which ultimately proved Leinster’s lead just about unassailable.
After an opening 10 minutes of pinball, Leinster won a penalty on the Saints 5′ which seemed like the perfect opportunity to settle into a three-point lead. Northampton certainly appeared to perceive it as such but Leinster were wise to the greater ambitions of their nine. Gibson-Park tapped quickly and slung an audacious pass from right to left which bisected Saints’ covering defenders James Ramm and Alex Mitchell. James Lowe found his parking spot between them and tucked away the hosts’ opening score, with Ross Byrne making it 7-0.
Lowe’s second try moments later came from another stroke of Gibson-Park’s instinct for ingenuity: with the ball buoyant having been half-stripped from Doris’ grasp on the Saints’ line, Leinster’s scrum-half volleyballed it out to his unmarked wing who strolled it home.
Out-half Byrne had already contributed a callback to Leinster’s previous Croker triumph, a brilliant read and interception effectively teeing up his side’s second score. When he teed the ball up to convert it, he clanged the left-hand post but Leinster led 12-0 and Saints were already starting to more closely resemble the first ever English side to visit Jones’ Road.
Byrne chipped his side out to a three-score lead — 15-0 — just shy of the half-hour mark as Leinster turned the tables on Northampton in the scrum.
Leinster’s defence, meanwhile, was frankly obliterating Northampton’s rightly vaunted attack.
These were less waves of home pressure and more a tsunami which looked capable of levelling anything in its path for several kilometres. Saints found themselves clinging to the debris.
Tadhg Furlong celebrated the next Leinster scrum penalty with the full-throated theatrics of a Wexford corner-back who had beaten a Kilkenny forward to a loose ball before winning a free-out.
Everything was coming up blue.
Much like the shorter sugar rush to start last year’s final with La Rochelle at the Aviva, one suspected that the hosts’ feral energy would surely have to dip enough to at least allow Northampton up for air before half-time.
When that momentary shift came, Northampton finally penetrated the home blitz on a penalty advantage and got to the right edge. They botched that legitimate try-scoring chance but Fin Smith chipped them onto the board at 15-3.
But Saints scarcely had a chance to collect their thoughts before they were trying to keep Leinster from their door again.
Rarely will you have seen a player embrace the idea of half-time with the zeal of Fin Smith as he kicked the ball out through his own in-goal area with the clock red.
But the break appeared to change little more than the directions in which the sides were playing. Leinster looked still possessed by whatever inconquerable spirit had taken them to a 12-point lead which frankly flattered their opposition. Saints still resembled ghosts.
Lowe’s hat-trick score in the left-hand corner in the 44th minute was born of a trademark Ryan Baird linebreak, the back row galloping into the Saints backfield like a racehorse rid of the burden of his rider. Byrne missed the conversion. 20-3. Remarkably, Leinster wouldn’t score again.
Initially, it didn’t look particularly likely that Northampton would, either. Saints’ three possessions immediately following that Lowe try saw them both spill forward and concede a breakdown turnover in Leinster territory, and Fin Smith miss touch with a penalty thanks to some brilliant fielding by Ciarán Frawley.
But as the visitors continued to throw you-know-what at the blue wall, something finally stuck just short of the hour mark: George Hendy’s chip and chase was poorly dealt with by a combination of Jordan Larmour and Andrew Porter, and the Northampton wing pounced on the bobbling ball to score.
Smith split the posts from the left-hand touchline to reduce his sides arrears to just 10 points, a margin which felt frankly weird given all that had gone before.
Ross Byrne’s two missed conversions — admittedly tough kicks, but you’d have backed him to slot at least one of them — had shortened the road ahead for the Premiership leaders. There were a few gulps when his success rate from the tee slipped further, his miscued penalty-kick at goal serving only to fuel Saints’ sense of momentum.
This Jacques Nienaber-infused iteration of Leinster have made a virtue this season of ‘seeing out’ games and they switched to management mode with 12 or 13 minutes remaining, initially with minimal fuss.
Gibson-Park affected that transition, allowing for only a couple of phases of home possession before he would kick a contestable. The game soon morphed into a disjointed battle of the boot, with James Lowe removing his prized weapon from its holster.
All seemed under control. In retrospect, though, Leinster may have shut up shop too early, and with too small a lead, particularly against a side who exhibit such potency in transition.
With six remaining, man of the match Gibson-Park accentuated his all-round brilliance as he denied the on-running Tommy Freeman a certain try with a lung-bursting piece of backfield cover to dot down Freeman’s exploratory kick.
The sound you could hear at that point wasn’t that of 82,000-odd Leinster fans but of the kitchen sink being unscrewed from the countertop. Full credit to Northampton, who refused to entertain the idea that their backroad into the contest via Hendy’s fortuitous try had been a cul de sac.
With just four minutes to go, Tom Seabrook finally breached Leinster’s defence once more to cross in the left-hand corner. Smith, again from that touchline, again split the posts.
The gap was three, and an altogether more urgent home roar went up once more from all corners of GAA HQ.
There were convulsions as Saints fashioned a half-chance down the left edge, eventually recycling to a more central position inside Leinster’s half.
But even more suddenly than Saints’ attempt at a miracle had began, it was ended by Doris, who hulked over their breakdown and had two bites at the cherry before he was rewarded by the whistle of Mathieu Raynal.
Leinster, who survived one final nuclear attack on their breakdown from the resulting lineout, neither march nor limp into the final but simply progress having done a lot of good and a little bit of bad.
Northampton, meanwhile, eventually proved themselves worthy of a place on Croke Park’s stage. It speaks to a side unexposed to occasions of today’s magnitude that only when it felt like they had nothing left to lose did they really begin to believe that they could win.
Their own little bit of good will see them leave Dublin with a taste of more.
