“WELL, WE got well and truly spanked, didn’t we?” The Glasgow coach Sean Lineen’s opening gambit guarantees us six minutes of pure, uncensored appraisal of what just transpired.
“They won the contact battle hands down both in attack and defence,” said Lineen of Leinster’s breakdown work. “We talked during the week about winning the space beyond the ball, but they won that battle very easily. It was a walk in the park in that first half. Game was over.”
Lineen knew what was coming, his players simply couldn’t cope with it. “Very direct, very abrasive – there are four or five instances there when they just stripped the ball from us. Like candy from a baby. Men against boys at times. The guys are better than that.
“But they’ve got some quality players. If you don’t front up against Leinster you are going to get punished. And we did.”
After snatching victory off Bath last week, Glasgow came believing they were finally contenders. They have to think again. “That first 40 minutes they caught us with our pants down. Around the ankles. We just didn’t come to the table, especially at contact time.”
Joe Schmidt is next in the hot seat. Joined by Eoin O’Malley (two tries yesterday, the 23-year-old centre is quick to note the handling error he made in the second half). What did the coach think of his latest outing in the most famous position in Irish rugby? “I thought defensively he made a number of good reads.
“There were a couple of times when I thought we were numbers down and he hovered really well and got guys organised around him. That in itself is a skill.
“It is a skill we rely a lot on our experienced midfielders for and it is something that has to grow in a younger player. I thought Eoin did that well. He took his two tries well. They were pivotal in building the scoreboard. He described the ball that did escape him in the second half. He got there first because he knows that one will come up for discussion.
“There were lots of good things. A couple of really nice passes that allowed us have the width to our game that we want to have.”
Not a bad review from the boss. We’ll get to the backrow, but first we wanted Joe to talk about the changing face of Leinster and how they maintain such high standards. “Shane Horgan was massive last year. I think he was one of our players of the Heineken Cup. We’ve lost Brian (O’Driscoll, whose shoulder operation last Wednesday was deemed a success) and Nathan Hines isn’t there so it is a little bit of a different team.
“You’ve got to keep building the base underneath what people might perceive to be the top line-up. With the amount of games we have to play there is no one person who owns a position.
“We want to make sure they don’t own it, they have to fight for it every time they do get it.”
But yesterday, as Lineen noted, was won in the collisions. Kevin McLaughlin, relentlessness on the blindside flank, threatened to overshadow his more famous backrow colleagues. “Kevin led by example. The amount of times he took contact square on and without budging. Jamie Heaslip tidied up a fantastic ball in the second half that looked like they might score from. And Seán O’Brien, the volume of play he got through was massive today.
“I think he is still building, but can deliver that for us, it’s great. Rhys Ruddock with Fionn Carr did a fantastic job to create a turnover effectively by lifting the guy into touch. Shane Jennings gave us a real bit of energy when he came on.”
