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Leinster run riot

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

Leinster won pulling up at Donnybrook last Friday night, and that they did so is much more impressive when you take into account the fact that they were without seven of their first choice regulars. Brian O’Droscoll, Keith Gleeson, Shane Horgan and Christian Warner all had to cry off less than an hour before kickoff, joining the already injured Girvan Dempsey and Keith Miller, as well as long-term absentee Denis Hickie, on the sideline.
And yet they disposed of the Northerners with hardly a second thought. Felipe
Contepomi and Victor Costello ran in a try apiece and Brian O’Meara put in a perfect night’s work with the boot, slotting eight out of eight kicks. It was Contepomi’s first appearance in a Leinster shirt and he did reasonably well at inside center, taking his score well after cutting through the Ulster cover all by himself.
Ulster were pretty dismal overall and they didn’t even have the excuse of a weakened team to fall back on. Adam Larkin’s appearance as a late stand-in for Shane Stewart aside, they fielded exactly the same team they had a fortnight previously in the final of the Celtic Cup. And yet they found themselves 19-6 down with just 10 minutes to go before halftime.
True, they roused themselves in the run-up to the break, sending Paul Steinmetz in for a nicely constructed try and managed to close out the half only 22-16 behind.
And they had their chances to make a game of it — David Humphreys had two kicks at goal directly after halftime. But he missed them both. O’Meara, on the other hand, was keeping the scoreboard ticking over down the other end of the pitch and when he produced a clever chip through for Costello to gather and score, the game was won.

MUNSTER 3, CONNACHT 0
Rain falling relentlessly, two steaming packs hurtling into one another with impuity and just one scoring intervention the whole night – boy was this one for the purists. While Leinster and Ulster were sharing five tries and 62 points at Donnybrook, this pair were trudging their way to a three-point game in Galway. Still, 3,500 hardy souls braved the Friday night squalls so it can’t have been all
bad.
Ireland coach Eddie O’Sullivan was in attendance, although quite what he’ll have made of a Munster side containing 14 internationals’ inability to fashion a serious try-scoring opportunity the whole game is unclear. It can’t have made for all that encouraging an evening’s watching.
The one score that did come emenated from the boot of Ronan O’Gara, a 67th-minute penalty gained after the Munster scrum forced the Connacht pack into an infringement. O’Gara had missed one earlier opportunity, just as Connacht’s kicker Eric Elwood had missed two. Indeed, the game seemed destined to end scoreless until O’Gara decided it with 13 minutes to go.

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