CJ Stander (picture http://bit.ly/1hoVSTF)
And here was me thinking the 6 Nations would invigorate the
Irish teams! Last weekend, apart from Connacht, it was pretty ordinary stuf
from the provinces. And then this weekend, only one win!
I only watched a bit of the Ulster Cardiff match, and they
were 5-0 up when Ieft them, from then on it went pretty pear shaped obviously,
in a fixture you felt they should have won.
The big clash was Leinster Munster, in front of a sell out
50000 crowd. It was an intense physical match, fortunately no injuries, with a
real finals rugby feel to it. Munster won the first half, and Leinster the
second and the match. The best break and offload was from a flank, as Jennings
set up O’Driscoll beautifully for his try. Apart from that, there was a lot of
bashing up, tackling, scrum resets, but while it was tense, there was no
overtly foul play, no gouging or murders, so that was good. For Munster, CJ Stander
was the stand out forward for me, while Earls and especially Zebo look really
sharp. Lualua is always dangerous, but doesn’t link all that well with the rest
of the team. For Leinster, Jennings had a great match, as did Kearney, D’Arcy
and Heaslip, and BOD put in a sublime kick just on half time. Frankly, both
teams (and Ulster) are really going to have to step it up for next week.
Leinster’s attitude at the end was job done, rather than being elated, both
teams have bigger fish to fry now!
Connacht just lost out at the Scarlets – they really seemed
to have turned a corner in their season, getting two bonus points out of the
match. There’s a lot of rugby still to
be played, but they are one position off qualifying for Europe on merit,
awesome for such a small team.
RaboDirect PRO12
Sunday , March 30
Scarlets 32 - 30 Connacht
Saturday , March 29
Zebre 25 - 25 Newport Gwent D'gons
Benetton Treviso 20 - 16 Edinburgh
Cardiff Blues 28 - 23 Ulster
Leinster 22 - 18 Munster
Friday , March 28
Glasgow 11 - 9 Ospreys
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