It was a tough night for Glasgow Warriors against Leinster at the Aviva Stadium. Image: © Craig Watson –
www.craigwatson.co.uk 
DAVID BARNES @ Aviva Stadium
THEY won’t have admitted as much beforehand, but Glasgow Warriors travelled to Dublin in hope rather than expectation, so a loss to one of the true super-powers of the European game is not a disaster by any stretch of the imagination. Franco Smith’s side will, however, have expected to make more of a contest of it. The visitors were battered from pillar to post by Leinster, who were out of sight by the 25th minute, and who will now host the winner of tomorrow [Saturday] evening’s quarter-final clash between Northampton Saints and Castres when the semi-finals of this Champions Cup campaign come around at the start of May.
Warriors, meanwhile, must lick their wounds and get back on the horse again when they visit Parma to take on Zebre in the URC next Saturday night. It won’t be the same sort of occasion, with all the hype and colour which goes with a run through the knock-out stages in Europe, but that – unfortunately – is their current level, and it is hard at the moment to see them finding a route to closing the gap which was so ruthlessly exposed by Leinster here.
Context is key. Warriors are not a bad team, as their URC triumph last season undeniably demonstrates, but this is a different level, and they were second best in every department. They will lament that they didn’t play to their full potential, and rightly point to the raft of missing key men such as Sione Tuipulotu, Huw Jones, Zander Fagerson Scott Cummings and Jack Dempsey. But that’s the game they are in. No concessions for hard luck stories.
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There was a couple of half opportunities early on. Matt Fagerson sensed space on the left but his overhead pass just inside Leinster’s half didn’t go to hand, then Jamie Dobie stretched for an interception and would have had a run at the line had he managed to scoop the ball in. But they were really just harmless jabs delivered by the plucky underdogs as the hosts settled into the match and readied themselves to start moving forward with a relentless authority which the visitors simply had no answer for.
Leinster thought they had taken the lead on nine minutes when Jordie Barrett propelled himself over from close range, but a replay on the big screen identified that the inside pass he had collected from Garry Ringrose was in fact a knock-on whilst being tackled by Dobie.
With the Glasgow scrum already cracking under ferocious pressure, and Leinster mixing up their attacking game with a combination of powerful carrying in the tight channels allied to some slick offloading, it became increasingly apparent that the disallowed try was merely a temporary reprieve, and so it proved when Max Deegan squeezed over on the right to get the scoreboard rolling less than five minutes later.
Sam Prendergast nailed the touchline conversion, and was just as deadly when kicking from hand, twice sending Warriors scuttling backwards with long touch-finders when the visitors had the temerity to sense that they might just have a chance to generate some momentum.
Kyle Rowe sniffed an opportunity when he blocked Tommy O’Brien‘s chip ahead and made good ground up the left touchline, but then his own kick into Leinster backfield was immaculately tidied up and sent 60-yard back downfield by Barrett.
The incline of this steep mountain Warriors were facing cranked up several more notches when O’Brien hunted down Rowe to turnover the ball five yards from Leinster’s line and Prendergast picked out Ronan Kelleher with an inch-perfect cross-kick. Adam Hastings stuck out a hand to block the hooker’s try-creating pass back inside, committing a deliberate knock-on, so the yellow-card and penalty try was a fair sanction.
Prendergast then broke through midfield straight from the restart, kicked ahead, and the harassed Rowe dribbled the ball back over his own line rather than throw his body on it, eventually touching down himself to concede a scrum five from which Jamison Gibson-Park exploited the extra man by sending out a 20-yard miss pass straight to the unmarked James Lowe on the left wing, setting up an easy jog to the line.
Try number four arrived with just half an hour gone, when more slick hands straight from scrum ball reached O’Brien on the right touchline, and he coolly stepped inside last defender Kyle Steyn to mark his first European start with an well-taken if rather easy score.
Hugo Keenan struck next, flopping on the ball in the in-goal area following the deftest of grubber’s laced through Glasgow’s bedraggled defence by the majestic Prendergast, and even when Warriors twice managed to battle their way to just inside Leinster’s 22 during the final stages of the half, Barrett pinched the ball on the deck both times, as if he was robbing sweets from a baby.
The really terrifying thing was that even though Leinster had already been forced to send Caelan Doris and Andrew Porter on as injury replacements, they still had the firepower of the likes Dan Sheehan, Rabah Slimani and Robbie Henshaw to come off their super-charged bench.
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The second half started in the same manner as the first had ended, this time O’Brien stole the ball from Gregor Brown on the deck after Hasting had briefly raised spirits by ghosting through a gap.
The next try, when it came on 47 minutes, was gallingly easy, with Ringrose skipping past a couple of tackles and riding a couple more on his way to setting up an easy conversion from Prendergast, who had floated through Warriors’ defence earlier in the passage of play to get Leinster within striking distance.
A penalty-created line-out five yards from the Leinster line offered Warriors a glimmer of hope that they might avoid ending the game completely empty-handed, but they couldn’t make any headway with the maul before Hastings was caught behind the gain-line as he tried to attack the short side and ended up being carried into touch by Barrett.
In contrast, when Leinster got themselves into the same position at the other end of the park just a few moments later, a clean catch and transfer back towards the touchline by Josh van der Flier sent Dan Sheehan over in an excellent demonstration of controlled power and accurate execution.
To add to Warriors’ sense of misery, Matt Fagerson was carted from the field after treatment on a lower leg injury with just under 15 minutes left to play, and Warriors will be hoping that the back-rower is not another addition to the long-terms injured list.
Warriors got in striking distance again straight after that stoppage, but lost another line-out, and you have to give Leinster credit because while their attack perhaps lacked some of the venom of the first half, they were absolutely determined not to concede an inch, no matter how comfortable their position was.
That’s not to say the hosts were quite finished with punishing Warriors on the scoreboard because after Dobie had kept O’Brien out on the right with a thumping tackle, play swung back the other way, and Deegan bookended the scoring by collecting Ross Byrne‘s on-the-money cross-kick to finish in the corner, bringing up the half century in the process.
Teams –
Leinster: H Keenan; T O’Brien, G Ringrose (R Henshaw. 52), J Barrett, J Lowe; S Prendergast (R Byrne 60), J Gibson-Park (L McGrath 52); C Healy (A Porter 31), R Kelleher (D Sheehan 48), T Furlong (R Slimani 52), J McCarthy, R Snyman (D Mangan, 62), M Deegan, J van der Flier, J Conan (C Doris 14).
Glasgow Warriors: K Rowe; J Dobie, S McDowall, T Jordan, K Steyn; A Hastings, G Horne (B Afshar 61); N McBeth (J Bhatti 48), J Matthews (G Stewart 48), S Talakai (P Shickerling 67), G Brown (E Ferrie 55), A Samuel (M Williamson 61), M Fagerson (S Cancelliere 67), R Darge, S Vailanu (J Du Preez 33).
Referee: Luke Pearce (England)
Scorers –
Leinster: Tries: Deegan 2, Penalty Try, Lowe, O’Brien, Keenan, Ringrose, Sheehan; Con: Prendergast 5.
Glasgow Warriors:
Scoring sequence (Leinster first): 5-0; 7-0; 14-0; 19-0; 24-0; 26-0; 31-0; 33-0 (h-t) 38-0; 40-0; 45-0; 47-0; 52-0.
Yellow card –
Glasgow Warriors: Hastings (22 mins)
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