Following what must have been the most difficult review day of his two seasons so far as Leinster’s head coach, Jacques Nienaber admitted the collective failure for their shock 37-34 Champions Cup semi-final defeat by Northampton included the coaches, with questions unresolved as to any mistakes made.
But he declined to go into detail on the defensive failings which contributed to a result which extends the province’s search for that elusive fifth star into an eighth season.
What made the concession of five tries and 37 points, in the midst of 35 missed tackles and 10 Northampton line breaks, all the more surprising is that Leinster had been conceding just 15 points and two tries per game in the URC and 9.3 points and 1.16 tries per game in the Champions Cup.
Where do Leinster go next after more Champions Cup heartache?
It was the most Leinster had ever conceded in 16 Champions Cup semi-finals and the most in the second season of Nienaber’s new defensive system.
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“The back room staff will ask was there something they could have done better. The coaches will ask that too and the talking points are: ‘Should our selection have been different? Should our strategies have been different?’ When you lose you have meetings to figure out why did you lose. When you win you just have parties and you move on. That’s the beauty of sport.”
When it was put to him that Leinster’s defence seemed to lack the same urgency and energy from the outset as when keeping Harlequins and Glasgow scoreless in the previous two rounds, as well as accuracy and connectivity, he admitted: “That’s the thing, all those things you mentioned ... the energy, the connectiveness ... Again, I don’t want to take anything away from Northampton by saying that. Definitely not as cohesive as we would have been in the previous weeks.
“As a group, we feel that we should have been better defensively. We had the potential to be a lot better,” he admitted. “And that’s almost the thing that, I won’t say hurts, that’s the disappointing part. If you look at the potential of the squad defensively and then look at the performance, we didn’t deliver on that potential, defensively.
“There are always fault lines in all things. You can’t go, it’s just mental, or just physical,” added Nienaber, who maintained “in some areas we were good physically. In our five-metre attacks, we scored five tries so that isn’t bad.
“But then you go: ‘How was physicality in defensive collisions?’ And that wasn’t maybe so,” said Nienaber. “Some areas were good, and then tactically, ‘How good was the kicking game? Did you play in the right areas of the field?’ There are a lot of different aspects, you can’t ringfence it and say: ‘It is just this.’”
As regards a selection which left Andrew Porter, Jack Conan and Jordie Barrett on the bench, Nienaber said: “In hindsight because we didn’t get the result it will always be ‘you were wrong because you lost’.
“The Jordie thing has been a big debate,” Nienaber conceded, before saying “I don’t think there’s a massive drop-off” between Robbie Henshaw, Garry Ringrose and Barrett. “It’s not like the two players you selected to start and the player on the bench is an academy player.”
In looking for impact off the bench, Nienaber and the coaches had also factored in how strongly Northampton finished last year’s semi-final and how Leinster, with Barrett and Tadhg Furlong among the replacements, had scored 31 points in the last quarter against Harlequins.
“But because we lose people will listen to this and you will have your opinion and you will go: ‘That’s bullshit.’ Because you just didn’t win.
“If we get over the line people would have said: ‘That’s actually quite clever.’ So, I don’t think anything I say will be right.
“We definitely didn’t think we’d be 27-15 down at half-time. That wasn’t the plan. But definitely I thought we got a nice injection from our bench in the second-half.”
Nienaber confirmed that the coaches did not send down a message to the then captain Jack Conan whether to go for the posts, and potentially draw level, or go to the corner with a penalty in the 76th minute.
“We trust his decision and their decision. I think again, hindsight makes perfect science. If we had scored, it would have been the right decision,” he said, citing the example of the final in Marseille when Johnny Sexton lamented regularly kicking for the posts.
Nienaber added that Leinster had scored two tries off quickly tapped penalties and two more from penalty plays, as well as one from a lineout maul, and that Northampton were down to 14 men and on a warning.
“So I can understand why they felt confident with that,” said Nienaber,
“If they had gone for the posts, I would understand that as well,” he added, noting that they could still have lost and people would have questioned why they didn’t go to the corner.
“Again, the outcome is probably going to justify if your decision was correct or not. That is where we currently sit. Nothing I say will justify the decision we made because the outcome didn’t go our way.”
Nienaber was also phlegmatic about the decision by Pierre Brousset and his French officials not to award Leinster a 79th-minute try with the penultimate play of the game, which saw Alex Coles sent to the bin for illegally ripping the ball from Josh van der Flier short of the line.
“Nothing is going to change. It’s done. So, if you need clarity because you are unsure why the result went that way with a decision from the referee, there’s obviously official channels that have to be followed. So, Leo is the guy who is in consultation on that.”
