The day Irish rugby changed forever as Leinster beat Munster in 2009 Heineken Cup at Croke Park
Jennings annoyed by Dorset Street shop visit - suspects lady is a Munster fan
DEREK FOLEY looks back at the Leinster-Munster European Heineken Cup semi-final at Croke Park from 15 years hence; the day told a terrific tale, the aftermath filled in lots of gaps, the present agrees it remains bettered by perspective, background and added detail, a terrific tale.
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That Leinster would win an epic Heineken Cup semi-final at Croke Park by 19 points, denying Munster a try in the process, was an unlikely outcome.
Munster had swamped them at the Aviva in the 2006 semi-final and had already thrashed them twice in the Pro12 that season — 18-0 at the RDS in September and 22-5 at Thomond Park in April.
Leinster had lost two pool games, at Castres and Wasps, before true to their previous Heineken incarnations produced a knockout ‘shocker’, a dreadful quarter-final performance against Harlequins in London.
The Blues spent almost the entire game defending in their own half, a lot of that in their own 22m and prolonged periods close to their own line, it was desperate stuff in more ways than one.
Rocky Elsom, Man of the Match in the opening pool game against Edinburgh, again in the quarter-final and Man of the Match in the final, was a superhero for 80 minutes in London; there are those to this day who will attest it was the single greatest performance by a Leinster player in any game ever.
Coffee
A funny tale in its own right as, not that too many people inside their group were admitting to this at the time, while Rocky-Matchday was a sensational barnstorming wonder, there were gripes and mumblings behind the scenes.
Rocky-Training was easily confused with Rocky-Sicknote and, while there was a ‘going for coffee’ cheesy culture among the players, Rocky-Loner simply didn’t bother.
By contrast, the Paul O’Connell-led Munster had posted five pool wins and a bonus-point loss at Clermont at Stade Michelin in defiance of banks of yellow/blue noise before slaughtering Ospreys in the quarter-final at Thomond Park.
O’Connell: “We were never going to win a third Heineken Cup without bringing something new to our game and it all seemed to come together for us that Sunday. We produced probably the best rugby I was ever part of in my time at Munster.”
Moreover, the Lions squad had just been announced, with O’Connell captain and one of an eight-strong contingent of Munster players who had back-boned Ireland’s epic 2009 Grand Slam, the nation’s first for 50 years.
But then there were enough burning Leinster-Munster chips on shoulders at Leinster to go around — take Shane Jennings deciding to pay a visit to Croke Park Museum the day before the game and stopping off at a shop on
Dorset Street.
“There was a woman working behind the counter and she engaged in a bout of small talk, asked me if I was going to the semi-final,” said Jennings.
“I guarantee she would have known one of the Munster boys had they come in...”
Brian O’Driscoll was a long time member of this chippy club: “We’d listened to guys with southside Dublin accents justify their allegiance to Munster on the basis of a mother born in Limerick, or a handful of childhood summers in Skibbereen.
Flags
“On matchdays we have driven past pubs with Munster flags flying above them, unchallenged.
“We’ve met time after time, the people who felt the need to approach us for no particular reason other than to clarify their allegiance: ‘We’re Munster first — then Ireland.
“Even now, with 82,000 tickets sold in no time, a world record for a club game, we were worried about running out to a sea of red in our own province.”
Not so, and while Mal O’Kelly had similar worries, by the time they ran onto the pitch the blue flags were in place.
“Typical Dubs crowd,” thinks the second-row, “always leaving it until the last minute...”
Leinster had found out they had friends they didn’t even know about as Robbie Keane, Kevin Doyle, Katie Taylor, Ken Doherty, Sean Boylan, GAA stars Matty Forde from Wexford, the Dubs’ Brian Mullins and Ciaran Whelan and even Boyzone’s Ronan Keating were among those who sent strident messages of support.
“News of the Heineken Cup was big back home,” says Stan Wright from the Cook Islands (91 square miles, pop 15,000). “There was great interest in the quarters, semis and final, which were all shown live on TV. We are a small nation but we are proud of our own. That day I knew everyone back in Rarotonga would be watching.”
Affect
Australian Elsom said: “There was obviously a huge historical backdrop but that side of things didn’t affect me. It was certainly an occasion that I could maybe enjoy more than some of the guys; for one thing I didn’t have a list of family and friends
plaguing me for tickets.”
Come actual kick-off Leinster’s fever pitch and Michael Cheika’s season-long rantings kicked-in quickly and in form of astereotypical, war-like tackling, collisions and ball-strips that signalled ferocious intent.
O’Driscoll/D’Arcy on Quinlan, Contepomi straight at O’Gara, Elsom on Dowling and then Mafi, Nacewa on Earls, Horgan on Warwick, Cullen on Wallace, Elsom on Leamy, Nacewa on Howlett, O’Driscoll/D’Arcy
continually on Mafi/Earls.
Their defence holds as Munster huff and puff at the house the GAA built, Felipe Contepomi has clipped over a 16th minute drop-goal, equalised two minutes later by a Ronan O’Gara penalty.
But there is concern as Contepomi damages his knee in the 25th minute and it is clear he will have to come off. Leinster’s replacement is Johnny Sexton, a player approaching his mid-twenties very few Leinster fans would have been able to pick out of a line-up.
Making his debut in the 2005/06 season, he has been a journeyman reserve behind a succession of first-choice out-halves ever since.
O’Gara says: “When he took to the pitch in that semi-final at Croke Park I knew very little about him, if anything at all. He wasn’t really a big name at Leinster, even though he had been around the scene for a while.
“At the time I was delighted to see Contepomi going off because I thought it would weaken the team. We now know with the benefit of hindsight that it strengthened Leinster, became the making of them because it gave them a general with balls at No.10.”
But Sexton’s first act, shades of his Johnny Cool persona to come, is to kick a difficult 26th minute penalty from wide on the left (despite kit-man Johnny O’Hagan initially arriving with the wrong kicking tee!).
Planned
Moreover, there is a game-breaking try in the offing for the Blues as their back-line produced a move Munster had never seen before. Mind you, the Leinster back-line had never seen it before either...
D’arcy adds: “It is like with anything, the move as it was planned and called didn’t ‘go’ like that. It was meant to be hitting Isa short, then hitting me out the back but the way Keith Earls defended it, Brian’s no-look ‘show-off’ pass was the best part of the move and then Isa just floated it to me and I was able to get over the line.
“I’d say in all the combinations that were tried in that move, we had never run it that exact way ever.”
O’Gara: “I can still picture Johnny standing over me screaming when they scored. Aside from having to wait for his chance with Leinster, I’d definitely said something to him before. Certainly that scream was him announcing to the world ‘I’m here and I’m here to stay’.”
Bad blood? “I went over to ROG after the game,” says Sexton, “and offered him my hand. He told me to fuck off. Later he came into the dressing room to congratulate Drico and Shaggy (Shane Horgan) on our win and he gave me a dirty look on the way out...”
Sexton missed the conversion but with O’Gara tacking on a penalty three minutes before the break, Leinster had made half-time, surviving a Cian Healy sin-bin too, 11-6 ahead.
As it was Leinster struck first and early, four minutes after the restart, O’Kelly winning a line-out followed by three front-row truck-ups before a sweeping back-move in which six backs handled before Luke Fitzgerald, given a one-on-one with full-back Paul Warwick, out-foxed him to score.
At this point Munster, 6-18 down, need to craft something but crafty Brian O’Driscoll had been keeping something up his sleeve.
Skip
O’Driscoll: “We were under the cosh after a spell of Munster pressure. I had spotted something which I took a chance on. Paulie is often a preferred ball-carrier and there is a certain mannerism that ROG has whereby I knew if I got myself in the right place at the right time I could benefit.”
O’Gara got possession on the hour, O’Connell was in place, O’Gara threw the ‘skip’ but backing his homework BOD had shot up, intercepted, and raced miles and miles with the Leinster fans screaming and screaming and screaming, to score.
Maybe Leinster needed that ‘safety’ as they had lost their fourth and fifth pool games scoring six and three points in the respective second-halves; been scoreless in the second-half of the sixth pool game against Edinburgh; scoreless in the second-half against Harlequins in the quarters...Leinster were, the formbok said, ‘faders’.
At 25-6 though the contest was done.
O’Connell: “People said we might have allowed ourselves to get complacent before the semi-final against Leinster. Nothing went right for us that day, and everything they’d been working towards in the three years since we’d beaten them in the semi-final paid off. But I don’t think what happened that day led to us falling apart and them going to another level.
“The truth is that, by then, they had good plans in place to be better and we didn’t. Had we won at Croke Park, we might have retained our title and made it three in four years but our lack of planning would still have hurt us down the line.”
And, interestingly, there is warning from the past for Leinster. Darcy: “Genuinely, I remember the weight and privilege of playing there but it took it’s toll — you looked at Bull Hayes, Jerry Flanney, everybody was emotionally too high too early in a game."
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