Big picture. Small picture. It’s a matter of focus and often peculiar to the onlooker.
The perennial quest for sporting teams is to find a balance between attention to the little details that offer incremental improvement in performance terms without becoming bogged down in minutiae to the detriment of the end goal.
There is a strong hindsight bias in evaluating results, or what constitutes success at any given time along a path that has silverware for those who are triumphant at the end of the season. The tricky bit is trying to decipher whether teams are getting enough of those small things right to fuel that goal come season’s end.
Leinster win in La Rochelle - grit or alarm bells?
Whatever way you look, Irish rugby has enjoyed an unparalleled period of success at provincial and at Test match level in the last 25 years. One of the byproducts is an unprecedented level of scrutiny and a heightened sense of anticipation for those who support the game.
The Counter Ruck: the rugby newsletter from The Irish Times
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The Six Nations Championship is just around the corner. Ireland welcome England and France to Dublin with a set of fixtures that will do little to dampen expectation. Victory against Steve Borthwick’s England on the opening weekend of the tournament and the chatter about back-to-back titles and other highfalutin achievements will grow swiftly, quicker than you can say Grand Slam.
Domestically it is a little bit more complicated, perhaps down to more subjective emotion and less objective reasoning around why teams do or don’t do well. There is no shortage of conspiracy theorists and theories about why Leinster’s quest for a fifth Champions Cup star has come up short, while there are plenty who will argue that Munster’s indomitable spirit was the primary catalyst for the province’s URC success.
The benchmark for success varies from province to province, it ebbs and flows on a weekly basis as teams go from performance to performance and result to result. Connacht offered a good example, delivering a display against Leinster that should have yielded more, only to then fail to show up in the following match when Ulster visited Galway.
However, success for Connacht could come in the form of a European trophy if there is a continuation of their form in the Challenge Cup in which they have produced a series of superb performances, the latest of which a consummate showing against Lyon.
Ulster rugby is in a dark place and, of all the Irish teams, the big picture for Richie Murphy and the players has become about winning more matches than they lose. A dismal performance to match the result against the Leicester Tigers at Welford Road reinforced the gap in quality on and off the pitch.
The moment Munster parted ways with Graham Rowntree the season took on a more complicated complexion, but there are green shoots. The manner of the victory over Saracens was everything we have come to enjoy about Munster down through the years, finding a way to win when scratching around for cohesion in the first hour or so at Thomond Park.
It was a match they could have lost but a few individuals led the way for the collective, roared on from the stands. Outhalf Jack Crowley was a whisker away from a stunning solo try, while John Hodnett’s impact from the bench was an important point of difference at a crucial stage of the contest. Travelling to Northampton this weekend will present an even tougher challenge.
Leinster, like Munster, had tunnel vision. There wasn’t too much focus on the bigger picture, it was all about a result. Leo Cullen’s charges have been nothing if not consistent, recording their 12th victory in all competitions last weekend against perennial foes La Rochelle.
There might be a respect off the pitch, and I’d suggest might is the correct word, but there is no love lost on it. This was not a Champions Cup-winning performance from Leinster, but it sufficed to get a win in hostile territory.
When Denis Hickie scored that stunning try in Toulouse all those years ago, and on another occasion when we pilfered a win against Clermont Auvergne in Bordeaux, both victories at the knock-out stage in Europe, we were outplayed for large periods of those matches. Sometimes you need to rely on a bit of luck and a large dollop of grit to get the result.
I think this was very much the case on Sunday in La Rochelle. Leinster’s performance was disjointed but at its core was the physical wherewithal to just about withstand everything the home side threw at them.
La Rochelle consistently challenged Leinster with ball-in-hand, at set piece and in the physical stakes. They were prepared for Leinster’s aggressive, high-line defence and while thoughtful in trying to circumvent it, crucially created just one gilt-edged chance.
Only Dillyn Leyds knows why he failed to accelerate through the hole created by Gregory Alldritt and Tawera Kerr-Barlow off a five-metre scrum It was a nailed-on seven-pointer had he done so.
The French club were more dangerous in possession without being able to deliver on the line breaks, but credit has to go to Leinster’s scramble defence and their general physicality. The focus, just like it was in December 2023, was to squeeze La Rochelle when they had the ball. The weather justified that approach that day; this time the win justified the means.
While I absolutely loved watching Leinster tough out that result, there is also a realisation that a one-dimensional performance like that will not be enough to secure that elusive big picture, big ticket prize. I have always said that you need to stack big performances on top of each other and to do that requires getting better with each game.
We failed to replicate the high of our performance against Toulouse and paid the price against Munster. The difference after our struggle to beat Clermont six years later was that we delivered a more assured, complete performance in the final against Ulster.
There is plenty of room for improvement in aspects of Leinster’s performance, but the ceiling and capacity is there, especially in attack.
Leinster and Sam Prendergast struggled to find continuity in order to build a consistent attacking shape. The young outhalf managed the game reasonably well, kicked when he needed to and didn’t force or chase too hard, but he still wasn’t able to impose himself on the game in the way he would have wished.
La Rochelle filled the field and contained their opponents without too much fuss, apart from Joe McCarthy’s well-crafted try. As I wrote last week, while the shape can be your friend, for Prendergast to kick on he needs to develop a feel for where the space is outside of that shape. That’s a work-on for Saturday against Bath. As for the bigger picture, those trophies get a little sharper in definition, with each victory.
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