Podcast Appearances
And I just thought that was a little bit of naivety from Toulon to think that we have to score straight away when in actual fact, if you work a team more when you've got 13 versus 15 or whatever, you probably get a bit more reward for your work, don't you?
Yeah.
There was a difference between the two teams.
I thought when Leinster had the ball, they were attacking Toulon.
When Toulon had the ball, Leinster were attacking them.
Leinster kept their passes and their pods nice and tight, so they were able to use footwork or little tips at the line or use their leg drive.
They kept playing both sides of the ruck, so they didn't allow Toulon to get any line speed or any momentum to go and take Leinster's space.
And if you flip that, Toulon played...
like some wide passes, which all that does when the ball's in the air, a long pass from nine to 10 or nine to a pod, it just allows Leinster or the defending team to just go and take the space off you against a team who are defending as aggressively as Leinster.
If you actually look at the first half, there was two or three examples where if...
The pass had been a bit shorter or they'd had a little bit more depth.
They actually probably could have got a tip away or used some footwork or whatever, but they got hit man and ball.
And I just felt like that was the opening 20, 25 minutes.
Lenton looked sharper.
But then I also think as well, when you looked at those two teams on paper,
you shouldn't be expecting Leinster to be hanging on with a couple of minutes to go.
And I think going back to the point we made about Leinster, we do judge Leinster slightly different or hold them to a different standard to most other teams because of the amount of success they've had, the British and Irish Lions they've got on their team, the players that they've got, the success they've had.
But I think...
I'm a little bit, I feel like, I feel like it's a bit of a cop out, but I'm sitting on the fence a bit because you look at that.
I looked at say like going back five years back to 2021 where they won the URC.