This must be what it feels like to attend American Football. With some French thrown in for good measure. Television match official Eric Gonthier and referee Romain Poite stumbled over two decisions that denied Harlequins a try, a player and essentially the ball game.
The Gallic pair took eight minutes to reach their last call, the sin-binning of Quins lock Charlie Matthews in the 78th minute, aggrieving visiting coach, the prodigal Conor O’Shea, to put it mildly.
O’Shea kept his emotions in check. “They are massive decisions but they are opinion,” said O’Shea. “We don’t control others’ opinion.”
As well as the Matthews yellow card, O'Shea's opinion differed from Poite's on the disallowed Mike Brown try as he believed Joe Marler had the ball ripped from his grasp by Rob Kearney on the ground. By rule, that should have been a Harlequins penalty advantage, so play on, so a try. Seven points in a one-point game matters.
Leinster coach Matt O'Connor, like any wily NFL coach, used the ever lengthening delays to his team's advantage.
Decisions right
“It gives us an opportunity to have a look at what’s going on, review video. It’s frustrating for the fans but we will look at it, it’s experimental at the moment, there are things to iron out but if you’ve got the technology you’ve got to look at it.
“There is scope because you want to get the decisions right, especially the ones that cost games. From a rugby perspective I think you need to use the technology...There was probably a language barrier today.”
French to English. Leinster profited. The victory means O’Connor avoids the heaviest criticism despite this latest poor performance.
“We didn’t get to the level we want to be at,” he conceded. “There was errors, there were opportunities that we didn’t take, set piece issues, all that.“But . . it was about keeping ourselves alive in the group. We have done that. We can improve there, we’ve got lots of growth in us.”
Joe Marler, way more than less, wiped Mike Ross in the scrum these past two weekends. England and Marler return to the Aviva on March 1st.
“That’s an issue for Ireland moving forward. Thankfully we don’t have to play him again . . .”
Jack McGrath also suffered.
“Romain told me in the second half that four or five penalties had been given against one and three,” said Heaslip.
“He just felt they had a little bit of dominance there at times. I thought he realised in the second part of the second half we were trying to keep it nice and square, keep the weight down and through. He saw that in the last scrum of the game.
“But the lads improved a lot from last week.”
Not enough to wrestle control of the Pool though.
“We’ve got to be a lot more clinical in the 22. That’s on us. We are in a good place. It is still all to play for in our group. This is where we wanted to be at this stage of Europe.”
O’Connor loses control of his squad yet again as Heaslip and many others disappear into Ireland camp. Rhys Ruddock looks to be badly injured.
“We get a list of the blokes who are rested and you pick from the rest,” O’Connor added. “Who we would like to rest and who we have to rest is a different question.
“The reality is you don’t get a pre-season with those guys. They are in and out of the environment. There is a massive strain on the squad given the injury profile we have at the moment. It is not an excuse. It is a fact. You just have to crack on. That’s professional sport. Blokes get injured. You got to deal with it.”
