Even by the standards of the blue machine, this was pretty impressive. Leinster quite simply reserved their biggest and best performance of the season for their biggest game of the campaign to date and against their best opponents.
The foundation stones were the excellence of their pack, especially at lineout time, their superior discipline and their execution of the basics, not least in their carrying and, by and large, their work at the breakdown in generating rapid-fire ball despite the litany of Toulouse threats in the jackal.
Importantly for both Leinster and Ireland, Ross Byrne again ran the show with aplomb and assuredness, as well as producing another exhibition of world-class kicking. No matter the angle, he nailed all seven of his kicks, executed the launch plays and played close to the line. Garry Ringrose and Hugo Keenan were superb again.Toulouse played their part, producing spells of superlative rugby, and the only reason it wasn’t the game of the season was because Leinster were simply so damned good.
The tone for this pulsating game was set by one of those typically breathless starts that are now almost de rigueur when two elite sides meet.After Byrne opened the scoring following probing work by Gibson-Park and Larmour, when Francois Cros didn’t roll away, Toulouse struck the biggest early blow. Within a minute, Leinster struck. Sheehan was stopped short of the line by Willis after springing off the maul as he does, and Jimmy O’Brien was nearly in by the corner flag, two phases later Gibson-Park fed Conan for a fine finish, bursting through Crow and Arnold.
Even after Ramos’ return, it was merely a stay of execution. From a Toulouse lineout, Mauvaka’s pass under pressure from Andrew Porter bounced off Willis invitingly for Sheehan who accelerated into free country, goose-stepping Dupont’s covering tackle and brushing through a fairly feeble attempt by Ramos.
The assistant referee somehow missed it, but the TMO didn’t and after Wayne Barnes sought to see if there was foul play after the “head-on-head contact”, he somehow came to the conclusion that it was “not a deliberate act” and brandished a yellow card. Really? It sure looked it.
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