Leinster exploit Toulouse indiscipline to power into Champions Cup final

The procession continues. No matter that the visit was of mighty Toulouse, the only club with a richer pedigree in this competition, Leinster march into the final of the Champions Cup as if it were the most natural, obvious cadence to an already stellar season.

Whether it is in the green shirts of Ireland or the blue of their province, these players have yet to be beaten this season. Toulouse are not quite so closely a mirror of their national team, but they include France’s best. This might represent a sobering afternoon for more than just France’s most successful club side in this, the year of their home World Cup.

Toulouse opened and closed the try-scoring, but in between they conceded five tries, four of them when down to 14 men. Leinster in Dublin, which they have been and will be throughout the knockout stages, is one thing, but offer them gifts on the discipline front and not even the aristos of the Haute-Garonne stand a chance.

A yellow card for Thomas Ramos in the first half and Rodrigue Neti, the replacement prop, in the second were all the invitation the hosts required. No team is as ruthless against a disadvantaged opponent. Jack Conan scored twice while Ramos was away to take Leinster into a 20-7 lead at the end of the first quarter, which Dan Sheehan improved the moment Ramos was back.

In the second half, Leinster’s pick-and-drive routine was overpowering, after Neti senselessly went for Josh van der Flier with his head and was fortunate in the current climate to see only yellow. Van der Flier scored from the lineout set up by that indiscretion.

When Jean Cruz Mallía, almost as senselessly, offended at a ruck, Jason Jenkins’s charge at the line proved one too many for Toulouse after the subsequent lineout.

Both Conan scores in the first half also came from lineouts, at which James Ryan, captain in the absence of Johnny Sexton, ruled appropriately. Conan’s owed more to sleight of hand and timing of pass than the power plays of Leinster’s second-half scores. These Irish can play it every which way.

Sheehan’s try, Leinster’s third just shy of the half-hour, owed to a mix-up between Paul Graou and Jack Willis, but what a finish, the hooker beating Antoine Dupont and Ramos for pace. Every which way indeed.

The presence of Graou in the first place told another story. Toulouse arrived with the very French tactic of a 6-2 split on the bench, which can work under the right circumstances. These include not losing a back to injury in the first half. Pierre-Louis Barassi was forced off in the 15th minute, prompting a reshuffle. Graou came on at scrum-half, and Dupont and Romain Ntamack each shifted out one.

This allowed Dupont to develop the roving brief he plays so well at the best of times. For a while, towards the end of the first half, it threatened to work when Manny Meafou scored Toulouse’s second, following a quickly taken penalty by Graou.

But Toulouse’s indiscipline was their biggest problem. Ramos’s yellow card for a knock-on deemed deliberate might have been contestable, but if you are going to go for those interceptions with a man clear outside, you had better be sure. Otherwise, Toulouse could not win a break with the referee Wayne Barnes, their first penalty awarded beyond the half-hour mark, by which time they had conceded six.

Which is a shame, because when they can play, few do it so beautifully. Their opening try, the game’s first, was slick and apparently effortless, those maestros in the back division putting Pita Ahki over before the first 10 minutes was out. Their try at the death, Willis guiding home a driven lineout of their own, showed they can play it slow and remorseless too.

It’s just that when it comes to multidimensional rugby, there is no one to compare with the Irish at the moment. Leinster will take on La Rochelle or Exeter with confidence in the final in Dublin in three weeks. Then their Ireland contingent, which is nearly all of them, will turn their minds to France again towards the end of the year.