Jamie Heaslip admitted that Leinster were a little relieved to escape the Aviva Stadium with a victory last night that keeps their hopes of qualifying for the knockout stages of the European Champions Cup in their own hands.
Relief was the word used by Brian O’Driscoll in the immediate aftermath of the 14-13 win over a resolute Harlequins side that battled back from 11-0 down to take a 13-11 lead with 15 minutes to go.
But Ian Madigan kicked the hosts back in front to draw Leinster level with Quins at the top of Pool 2 with 13 points.
Should the sides match each other over the final two rounds, Quins would top the pool by virtue of their greater margin of victory last week at the Stoop, but wins against Castres and Wasps would nonetheless be enough for Leinster to claim one of the three runners-up spots in the quarter-finals.
‘There is a little bit of relief, like Brian said, but at the same time there’s happiness that we got the win,’ Heaslip said. ‘There’s happiness that the group is still within our control.
‘We realise it was in the balance, obviously, but at the same time, for a lot of guys who haven’t necessarily played a lot of games at this level, it will show them what happens when you make errors against a side like Harlequins.
‘We made a defensive error off the back of that maul, which was a compounded error off the back of a scrum before that. That’s what happens – you give teams scoring chances like that in this competition and they will put you under the pump. You have to defend well, which at times we didn’t.
‘With the possession and territory that we had, maybe we should have had more scores on the board but unfortunately we didn’t.
‘In fairness, we held in there especially during that purple patch they had in that first quarter of the second half. We regrouped, got ourselves together and said: “We hold onto the ball, we get into the scoring positions that we did in the first half and we’ll get the return”. That’s what we did.’
Leinster’s scrum again came under a lot of pressure but their sole try came off the back of the setpiece as Heaslip broke away and passed to scrum-half Isaac Boss to touch down in the corner.
And the skipper paid tribute to tighthead Mike Ross’s for his work in ‘winning the hit’ to set up the eight-nine move.
‘I felt that we got it up on Rossy’s side and had a lot of momentum. It felt to me that it was whipping around from the left. I didn’t hear any advantage or ‘use it’ call so I was trying to get it out before it went 90 degrees.
‘I could hear Bossy behind me and I knew I had a two-on-one situation. Yeah, Rossy won the hit and got it up on his side for us. The lads kept it wide on. Once you get that opportunity, two-on-one, you back your drill and I heard Bossy and he went into the corner.’
Quins director of rugby Conor O’Shea was understandably disappointed to lose after getting back into the game, but believes the close games of the past week against Leinster will stand to his side.
‘We were playing the Pro12 Champions as far as I was aware,’ the former Irish full-back said. ‘The best team in Heineken Cup history in my book and we had a difficult start to the season for a multitude of reasons but we aren’t a crap side.
‘Sometimes you have to fight to get your confidence back. There were two teams slugging it out. It wasn’t pretty at times but confidence will be bread by winning games.’
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