Leinster’s Champions Cup dreams in tatters in tale of late penalties

Tomorrow’s opponents head into game with a point to prove having suffered their heaviest European home defeat in their Champions Cup opener with Wasps.

“I have worked on a variety of national and worldwide events since joining the Ricoh Arena ten years ago and this will rank up there among them for me and the rest of the operations staff”, said Justine. Bath had the 19-16 win and Leinster – 0 from 2 pool games – are hoping for miracles. Much of the English side’s scoring stemmed from success at scrum time, with their only five pointer of the contest a penalty try at the set-piece.

However, they lost the resulting lineout and Garces blew the final whistle as Leinster lost by a score of 19-16, and while they are mathematically still in the Champions Cup, they will need to win against holders Toulon to have any chance of progressing.

The visitors showed their mettle, springing replacement flanker Josh van der Flier through a gap to score a 69th-minute converted try.

The absence of Jack Conan – a replacement last week – with a broken foot suffered in training further weakens the options in the pack where Cian Healy, Sean Cronin, Hayden Triggs and Rhys Ruddock are the new faces, though the news in the back line is more encouraging. We lost the ball too many times when we had good attacking positions through not being patient.

“We are aware of how tough it is going to be, of Clermont’s record at their ground, but these are the kinds of challenges that you have to enjoy as rugby players and coaches”.

“It was a bad day at the office”.

“Until you really know what points come out of that game, it’s going to be hard to say”.

It was 10 days before the new England head coach Eddie Jones would report for work at Twickenham and on an afternoon when Bath struggled to finish what they had started, he would have been most impressed by the two props, Nick Auterac and Henry Thomas, who as well as earning their side’s penalty try in the second-half were prominent in the loose. It’s an exciting challenge to go down to Toulon.

“We still don’t know what the outcome (will be) of that game (against Bath) – are we going to play it in midweek or just share the points?”

The Leinster rugby team look like they had a fair bit of craic on their flight over to the United Kingdom today, ahead of their clash against Bath tomorrow.

“After getting back to 16-16, I thought we looked the stronger team at that stage”.

“We’ll dust ourselves off now again and we’ve got another game in the Pro12 on Friday against Ulster”. “We were in control of the game and stupidly did things to let the back in the game”.

“But credit goes to Bath, they fought their way back in and off that missed penalty kick, they ran the ball back well as us, got another scrum penalty and obviously Fordy (George Ford) showed good composure to nail that kick at the end”.