Leinster v Scarlets Sat 16th October 2021 17:15 TG4

[cormac]

Matchday injury curse strikes again as Tommy O'Brien replaces Jimmy O'Brien on the bench

[elephantman]

Matchday injury curse strikes again as Tommy O'Brien replaces Jimmy O'Brien on the bench

Tommy is the best O’Brien we have. In the backs at least.

[wixfjord]

Lowe hands them the opening try.

[fourthirtythree]

Good to see P Traille is back playing for us. We've monstered their scrum from first to last.

[riocard911]

Porter MOTM for me thus far. Amazing shunt by Furlong to keep the lineout maul for the Kelleher try from veering into touch and going towards the tryline!!!

[wixfjord]

Good game, lots of tempo from both sides.

Ross Molony had a really good game. Very aggressive. Hit the maul for the first try and drove it over.

Our ruck work was much better. Backplay was far sharper too and back three are linking well. Larmour much improved on last week.

The Sexton/Frawley axis looks really nice.

Keenan's was a clear try, not sure how they didn't give that.

Porter was all over the place. Scrum looks really good too. If he can continue like that this decision will look inspired.

Our 1-3 and 16-18 will be some weapon if they all stay fit.

[Ruckedtobits]

A lot of outstanding performances today. Scarlets were certainly a different animal than last week and everything Leinster got they had to work for. Both of our front-rows were excellent as were all four back-rows but particularly Doris.

Lowe & Ringrose had some difficulties with tackles and Larmour had some with his top-end pace ( acceleration excellent, pace questionable). Really enjoyed it after a sticky first 15 mins.

[hugonaut]

Really good win from the Blue Machine. The Scarlets started well and were properly motivated, but we were able to put them into the meatgrinder in a way that would have made Joe Schmidt proud! In fairness, we actually played some really nice rugby between the 22s, but we definitely won that win at the coalface.

Peter Porter would have been my MOTM ... I thought he had an absolutely cracking match, both in the tight and the loose. Frawley was very good too though, so I have few complaints with him getting picked out for an individual award.

[Oldschoolsocks]

Andrew?

[fourthirtythree]

Andrew?

Peter Porter picked a pack of Scarlets pockets.

[Oldschoolsocks]

Andrew?

Peter Porter picked a pack of Scarlets pockets.

[wixfjord]

Worth re-watching and just observing Dan Sheehan’s cameo. Incredible stuff. He was pinging lineouts, making breaks, giving back of the hand offloads and scoring tries. Some talent.

[Dave Cahill]

Worth re-watching and just observing Dan Sheehan’s cameo. Incredible stuff. He was pinging lineouts, making breaks, giving back of the hand offloads and scoring tries. Some talent.

He was feckin' brilliant

[ronk]

Worth re-watching and just observing Dan Sheehan’s cameo. Incredible stuff. He was pinging lineouts, making breaks, giving back of the hand offloads and scoring tries. Some talent.

He was feckin' brilliant

And he out jumped a winger on a cross field kick when the winger had a good angle to attack the ball.

[enby]

Porter was absolutely outstanding. What an extraordinary talent he is. He set the tone for the front five, all of whom played very well. Sexton is playing as well as ever he has, missing selection for the Lions seems to have stood to him. The replacement front row put in a great shift but Sheehan really was something else.

Now for the bad bits: Lowe's defending was worse than ever, he really seems to be clueless. Both of the Scarlet tries resulted from dreadful defensive reads by Lowe. This just can't continue.
The backs never really gelled in attack and the fact that all 7 tries came from the forwards says it all.
Finally, the atmosphere was very tame. Maybe it was caused by the inevitability of the result but the crowd were incredibly quiet throughout.

[johng]

Was fairly close to the cross field kick. No way was the winger getting hold of that ball.

And after he was in no way getting hold of that ball there was no way him or anyone else was stopping Dan from getting in close enough to the posts to bring up the 50.

Scarlett's backline was very talented and they were obviously stinging from last week. But as Hugo alluded to... We "took them to the woodshed" as Eos would say.
We were always going to have them in the pack.

Porter Molony Conan and Dorris the standouts for me.

[Oldschoolsocks]

all of our trys came from the pack, 5 from the front row, one from the backrow and a penalty try.

Doesn't mean that our backs were not outstanding , it just kinda reinforces the whole the forwards win the match mantra, however the backs did not decide by how much today

[johng]

God gave me the talent. The forwards gave me the ball. Or.... Something.

[Blue Man]

On paper, this looked a really strong Leinster side and 50 points suggests a strong performance; however, the reality is that it was a poor performance once again littered with basic individual errors and completely lacking cohesion.

The backrow was poor for the first hour with Conan rusty after the prolonged break and Doris out of position at 6.
The second row lacked power, I’m worried about Ryan as he remains well below his form of 2-3 years ago.

Johnny looked solid, if unspectacular but his half back partner JGP was very average and kicked badly.

There seems to be an attempt to expand the game plan to rely less on grunt from the pack and get the ball to the 3/4s early but the Scarlets defense wasn’t being fixed, allowing them to drift onto the Leinster wide attackers. At times it felt as if we were shuffling it out to Lowe who was almost in touch when he got it and had two defenders on him. The accuracy of our backline passing and lines of running were bad.

Once again there were too many turnovers (sixteen). Far too often, players went into contact upright or isolated resulting in a turnovers.

Lowe’s defending was bad for both tries and even the ever dependable Keenan made mistakes.

I thought the scrum looked unbelievably powerful but the ref was very harsh on us and allowed the Scarlets pack to illegally spoil the contest. Porter is a serious athlete and it was great to see Furlong back.

Hopefully something is building in terms of style of play and with more matches will come greater cohesion and fewer individual errors.

[wixfjord]

On paper, this looked a really strong Leinster side and 50 points suggests a strong performance; however, the reality is that it was a poor performance once again littered with basic individual errors and completely lacking cohesion.

Couldn’t disagree more with that. This was our most ‘cohesive’ performance of the year so far besides Bulls.

Lineout, scrum, maul really good. Backplay much better and forwards linking really well.

How many breaks did we make from our own half?

Offloading game needs work to ensure more stick, but you’ll get that with trying to push things.

Lowe needs a reminder defensively but the second try wasn’t his fault. They had numbers, Lowe drifted and Keenan bit leaving a man to run in.