Spot on. It was totally a home game for LAR and they got pretty much every piece of luck going on the day.. but that happens. I've said it numerous times but I think it's impossible to get to 6 finals and win them all. Some days you won't get the luck or the 50:50 decisions that you get in other finals.desperado wrote: ↑January 8th, 2023, 10:00 pmVery good points Hugo. Brings back painful memories. I seem to remember JLo almost in 'beach gear' during TV coverage of the captains run in Marseille, and taking zero part in the run out. Remember travelling over the morning of the game and most were full sure he wouldn't be playing - was so surprised when he was on team sheet. We we're minutes away from winning. The atmosphere was so partisanly French it was almost a home game for LAR. I never watched the recording I was so deflated. If I'm right Big Mike had a possible jackal latch not rewarded by Barnes as Barnes said Moloney was on the ground obstructing a clear out; other small margins like the ball brushing off JOBs shin as he tried to usher it dead. We were very very close.hugonaut wrote: ↑January 8th, 2023, 8:38 pmThe common refrain was a load of nonsense though. A lot of people searching for a narrative, some of them honestly, some of them with an axe to grind.Ray Donovan wrote: ↑January 8th, 2023, 5:09 pm
That’s pretty much how we ended the regular season last year. We needed 1 bonus point from 2 games down there to guarantee top seeding and the young guns got it. And the common refrain then was our frontliners weren’t exposed to enough high intensity games come the business end of the campaign.
Having said that I still think sending a developmental side to SA is the more favourable option.
With regards to high intensity games? We beat the English champions elect on their home patch in the quarter final, then absolutely hammered the French champions elect in the semi-final. We got beaten in the last play of the game away in France, to a really good French team, in front of a French crowd.
It's knock-out rugby, if you're playing a good team, they play great and you don't play great, you get beaten. It doesn't take an awful lot. It's a one-off match.
We played an obviously injured James Lowe in the European final and it wasn't far off playing with fourteen men. He had 13 carries for 105m and two tries in the semi final against Toulouse, got a bad bang on the leg in the last minute of that game and in the final he had 1 carry for 0m. We didn't pass him the ball because he couldn't run. He didn't come looking for the ball because he couldn't run. We took a risk playing him, it completely didn't pay off.
Lowe is the best try-scorer in the history of Leinster Rugby - 50 tries in 69 games. The only people ahead of him are Shaggy [69 in 203 games], Drico [61 in 186 games], Darce [60 in 257 games] and DK [54 in 178 games]. You can see why a coach would take the risk.
We didn't really even have a suitable sub on the bench, opting for Frawley at No23 – Frawley had made 13 of his 14 starts at No12 that season [the other one at No10]. We ended up not using him. Kearney was injured, Tommy O'Brien was injured, Larmour had just played his first game in 11 weeks, we hadn't picked either O'Loughlin or Adam Byrne in any of the previous games of the competition. There's a real temptation to imagine those guys [AB & Locko] at their peak and think what they might have contributed, but the reality was that their form that season had seen them passed out by pretty much every other threequarter in the senior squad.
We probably should have picked Larmour on the bench, but this is 20-20 hindsight stuff. Frawley was the form player, but he didn't really give us the coverage where we needed it. We had actually had Tommy on the bench for the QF against Leicester, but unfortunately he got injured in training before the Toulouse game.
You're also playing very good teams, as its a final, so those things matter.
I'm still convinced we're a better team/squad than LAR (and Stormers & Bulls) but sometimes that's not enough.