John O'Sullivan
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
They just kicked the ball back to Leinster and said, off you go again.
And their only tactic seemed to be trying to kind of turn over ball and play.
Even I was going to say play a little bit of turnover ball, but I'm not so sure they played of turnover ball either.
So their ambition was a poverty of imagination and what they were trying to do other than be hugely muscular and stopping.
They were stopping Leinster from playing, which they were very successful at and you give them credit for in the way they went about it.
But once Leinster prized a little bit of daylight on the scoreboard, Sale realised that, well, how are we going to win the match now?
And they had no idea how to win the game.
And they just disappeared from sight out of the game.
And the one little bit of rugby they played, they scored a try towards the end when...
Both benches pretty much had been emptied.
So it was a curious game.
Leinster scored some good tries and played some good rugby, but they played some good rugby based on the fact that Sale were missing a few players, ran out of steam, ran out of energy.
And again, there were a few issues for Leinster when the game was more of a contest in the first half.
Scrum being an issue, losing Alex Ustinov early on was a big drawback.
Jerry Carey did a great job, all that sort of stuff.
But yeah,
Once Leinster figured out how they were going to get over the gain line and got in to play behind Sale, wrecked Sale's line out.
Like the funny thing is that Sale were trying not to play off an unsaleable platform and they were just kicking ball away.
George Ford just kicked it up in the air.
Hugo Keenan gobbled it up and Leinster got the ball back and it took them a while to figure out how to get through Sale.