Ospreys v Leinster RP12 - Post Match debate

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OSPREYS (9) 19
Tries: Walker Cons: Morgan Pens: Morgan (3) Drop-goal: Morgan

LEINSTER (10) 10
Tries: Auva'a Cons: Madigan Pens: Madigan

Eli Walker's spectacular try gave Ospreys a hard-fought Pro12 win over European champions Leinster.
One point separated the sides at the break after three Matthew Morgan penalties followed a converted Leo Auva'a try and an Ian Madigan penalty.
Richard Fussell sliced through the Leinster defence from deep in his own half, timing his pass perfectly for lively wing Walker to score.

Morgan converted and added a drop-goal to deny Leinster a losing bonus point.
Ospreys were often on the back foot against a powerful Leinster pack, but showed tenacity in defence and a touch of flair to capitalise on a rare break.
It gave the Welsh side their sixth win from the last seven meetings with the Irish province and took them above the visitors to fifth place in the table.

Ospreys fly-half Matthew Morgan lands a late penalty to deny Leinster a losing bonus point
They rode their luck at times, and were fortunate to escape as early as the seventh minute when a try slipped through Fionn Carr's fingers when the Leinster winger failed to hold onto the ball while sliding towards the left corner.

But the visitors pounced from the resulting line-out after charging down the attempted clearance kick from Ospreys scrum-half Rhys Webb.

The ball spun towards the posts, evading the grasp of home centre Andrew Bishop, and Leinster number eight Auva'a gathered up with glee to score.
Video referee Nigel Whitehouse gave the try despite the suspicion of a knock-on, and Madigan converted.

Two Morgan penalties cut the deficit as Ospreys began to make inroads, but they needed Walker's intervention to deny Leinster a second try when Andrew Conway chased his own chip kick.
Another let-off soon followed when Madigan pulled a simple kick at goal wide, but Morgan's aim was true as he added a third penalty with the final kick of an even first half.

Webb was the next to save the home side early after the break, clinging on by his fingertips to Madigan's shirt with the try-line in the fly-half's sights.
Leinster were on top at this stage, benefiting from their numerical advantage following a yellow card to home prop Duncan Jones.

But a moment of magic from Fussell ripped open the Leinster defence for Walker's decisive try.

Full-back Fussell received a quickly taken line-out in his own 22 and sliced through the lethargic chasing defenders, finding a clear path into the opposition half.
Walker, the most dangerous player on show with ball in hand, was perfectly placed to receive Fussell's pass as he drew the final Leinster cover.

Morgan converted, putting Ospreys 16-10 ahead, and Jones's return from the sin bin was another boost as the game entered the final 20 minutes.
Leinster continued to enjoy forward dominance, but enterprising back play took Ospreys within drop-goal territory and Morgan made no mistake to take his side two scores clear with five minutes remaining.

TEAM DETAILS

Ospreys: Fussell; H. Dirksen, Isaacs, Bishop, Walker; Morgan, Webb; D. Jones, Dwyer, Rees, Peers, J. Thomas, Stowers, Lewis, Bearman.
Replacements: M. Thomas for Lewis (54), Fotuali'i for Webb (57), King for Peers (59), Lewis for M. Thomas (62), Allen for Bearman (77).
Not Used: Ellis, Suter, Spratt, R. Jones.
Sin Bin: D. Jones (51).
Leinster: D. Kearney; Conway, Macken, Goodman, Carr; Madigan, Boss; Van der Merwe, T. Sexton, Hagan, Browne, Toner, Ruddock, Jennings, L. Auva'a, Marshall.
Replacements: Marshall for Browne (26), Murphy for Marshall (65), Moore for Hagan (68), Tracy for Auva'a (77), J. McGrath for Van der Merwe (77)
Not Used: Cooney, Reid, Coghlan-Murray.
Att: 9,246
Referee: John Lacey (IRFU)
Assistant r eferees: Neil Nennessy, Wayne Davies (both WRU)
Citing c ommissioner: Dennis Jones (WRU)
TMO: Nigel Whitehouse (WRU)
Your comments
Also related to this story

asoreleftshoulder wrote:

wayne wrote:Can I intrude on this Irish love in, your first penalty should not have been allowed the scrum half knoked the ball on into Showers back, your try the first 2 times Auva touched the ball the ball moved forward, how the Welsh TMO gave it is mystifying. The take out of Walker that was not given, so called for a knock on hit his knee, it was nowhere near his hand, just finished watching it back.
Have to say the conditions were terrible and atmosphere was tremendous with many Leinster fans there, with so many 2nd, 3rd choices and academy players on that field it was highly enjoyable.
Leinster did have ascendancy in the scrums, but you lost that game in the back row, anything that moved was chopped down by Lewis and Stowers who had his best game as an Osprey and when Bearman had the ball in hand you really couldn't control him, with the height advantage you had in the lineout you were quite poor in that department.

8 clean breaks and 21 defenders beaten* would suggest that isn't really accurate,we butchered several chances and wasted our dominance in the scrums.I don't want to take too much credit away from the O's but in this game I feel we lost it as much as they won.

*stats from here http://www.espnscrum.com/rabodirect-pro12-2012-13/rugby/match/167027.html the website isn't always perfectly accurate but would be in or around the right numbers.

I personally if I hadn't seen that game would take it with a pinch of salt, according to that 5 Leinster players made breaks without beating a player and another beat a player without making a break. Defies Logic.

Eh.. what? If a forward picks and carries through heavy traffic, knocking a player or two off him as he goes, he has beaten defenders but he has hardly made a clean break. A clean break is as the name suggests - you can break through the line by cutting a fantastic angle without having to "beat" a defender.

Rory_Gallagher wrote:Eh.. what? If a forward picks and carries through heavy traffic, knocking a player or two off him as he goes, he has beaten defenders but he has hardly made a clean break. A clean break is as the name suggests - you can break through the line by cutting a fantastic angle without having to "beat" a defender.

What line has he broken by cutting a fantastic angle the 22, the hafway line, the 10 metre line? the line broken is a line of players who are defenders beaten as I said Defies Logic

So there is no such thing as creating/exploiting a gap in the defence? It isn't always about boshing it through the midfield and breaking the gain line. There are plenty of good broken field runners who will exploit any gaps or space available to them. Making clean breaks past the defence, rather than straight through it.

If you are going to count a clean break as beating the entire defensive line then you might as well add 15 defenders beaten each time. Which would make little sense.

LeinsterFan4life wrote:

RubyGuby wrote:Ruddock and Toner are destined to be nearly men. Good back up players for Leinster IMO and little else - Harsh but just my opinion; there is little dog and aggression in both of them and they punch well below their weight.

Ruddock is 21 years old...Is that the age we judge players on now?

Its just my opinion Fan4Life - I would love for both of them to prove me wrong, Toner in particular is a cracking lad and Ruddock has time on his hands - I just don't see it happening - Leinster are the standard bearers in Europe and I see these 2 as playing secondary roles (valuable roles nonetheless) as time moves on and I believe they will be superseded by more superior players. I'm not just using yesterdays match to judge them

RubyGuby wrote:

LeinsterFan4life wrote:

RubyGuby wrote:Ruddock and Toner are destined to be nearly men. Good back up players for Leinster IMO and little else - Harsh but just my opinion; there is little dog and aggression in both of them and they punch well below their weight.

Ruddock is 21 years old...Is that the age we judge players on now?

Its just my opinion Fan4Life - I would love for both of them to prove me wrong, Toner in particular is a cracking lad and Ruddock has time on his hands - I just don't see it happening - Leinster are the standard bearers in Europe and I see these 2 as playing secondary roles (valuable roles nonetheless) as time moves on and I believe they will be superseded by more superior players. I'm not just using yesterdays match to judge them

Fair enough I suppose. I think we all forget how young Ruddock is sometimes because he's been around so long. He made his Ireland debut in 2010. I want to see him do well.

Gibson wrote:

RubyGuby wrote:Ruddock and Toner are destined to be nearly men. Good back up players for Leinster IMO and little else - Harsh but just my opinion; there is little dog and aggression in both of them and they punch well below their weight.

The Shrink, he's not wrong you know. Both have the perfect physicality to dominate at their positions, but they need whipping, chaining down & fed raw meat for a bit. No dog.

Toner has some chance. Untouchable at the lineout. With a decent thrower that is. But Ruddock is surrounded by international-class back-rowers. Murphy looks the business too. Wally-esque. And there are 3 more coming through from the U20's.

We could slave-trade back-rowers us.

I wonder if Leavy and Van Der Flier will get on the u20 team. Leavy might be a bit young yet, he's only 18 but he's already playing with the A's. a lot of hype around him.

Rory_Gallagher wrote:So there is no such thing as creating/exploiting a gap in the defence? It isn't always about boshing it through the midfield and breaking the gain line. There are plenty of good broken field runners who will exploit any gaps or space available to them. Making clean breaks past the defence, rather than straight through it.

If you are going to count a clean break as beating the entire defensive line then you might as well add 15 defenders beaten each time. Which would make little sense.

I'm not talking about beating a defensive line of 15 players, you are, Fussell beat 2 players twice by cutting an angle to set up our try, so he beat 4 defenders. It's funny that all this emphasis is on this part of my article and nothing said about the try that was awarded and shoudn't have been and the try that wasn't awarded that should have been?

RubyGuby wrote:

LeinsterFan4life wrote:

RubyGuby wrote:Ruddock and Toner are destined to be nearly men. Good back up players for Leinster IMO and little else - Harsh but just my opinion; there is little dog and aggression in both of them and they punch well below their weight.

Ruddock is 21 years old...Is that the age we judge players on now?

Its just my opinion Fan4Life - I would love for both of them to prove me wrong, Toner in particular is a cracking lad and Ruddock has time on his hands - I just don't see it happening - Leinster are the standard bearers in Europe and I see these 2 as playing secondary roles (valuable roles nonetheless) as time moves on and I believe they will be superseded by more superior players. I'm not just using yesterdays match to judge them

I have to agree. Ive watched them both closely. Its not in them naturally.As much as I want them both to come through and fulfill their potential, I have an inner-feeling they wont at Leinster and will star in the Jeff. That's what normally happens innit?

Nathan Hines was an enforcer. An animal when tings got rough. And who did we get in to negate him down in Clermont? Yup. His Nemesis, Thorn. It worked like a dream.

We lack that badly this time round. Leo, Captain! My Captain! is an Enforcer, but hes gettin on. The lack of support for him may unhinge our season yet.

I'm so proud of the lads for winning this game, truth be told the referee was terrible. I thought I'd seen it all last season with Fitzgibbon only refereeing the ospreys and letting Leinster break any rules they wanted. But this ref was probably worse, time and time again Leinster boys were coming in at the side and laying all over the ball which was totally ignored yet I think we managed to do it once and had Duncan sin binned in the middle of the field!

One try they scoured that shouldnt of been awarded while we had one disallowed because Eli was taken out off the ball, then fussell dives on it and the referee decided to award a scrum for a knock on??? There was clearly a Leinster player between Eli and the ball so how the hell he knocked it on was baffeling.

It's hard to have any respect for Irish rugby when every week they seem to bring a blatantly cheating ref with them when they come to the liberty. It's just sad the gutless WRU don't have the balls to deal with these referees and are more concerned with profit margins.

Despite the win there was no hiding the level of disgust amongst the Ospreys fans departing the stadium for the way the referee handled that game. Well done lads, I'm just proud we sent them back over the Irish sea having beaten 16 men with our 15.

Shifty wrote:I'm so proud of the lads for winning this game, truth be told the referee was terrible. I thought I'd seen it all last season with Fitzgibbon only refereeing the ospreys and letting Leinster break any rules they wanted. But this ref was probably worse, time and time again Leinster boys were coming in at the side and laying all over the ball which was totally ignored yet I think we managed to do it once and had Duncan sin binned in the middle of the field!

One try they scoured that shouldnt of been awarded while we had one disallowed because Eli was taken out off the ball, then fussell dives on it and the referee decided to award a scrum for a knock on??? There was clearly a Leinster player between Eli and the ball so how the hell he knocked it on was baffeling.

It's hard to have any respect for Irish rugby when every week they seem to bring a blatantly cheating ref with them when they come to the liberty. It's just sad the gutless WRU don't have the balls to deal with these referees and are more concerned with profit margins.

Despite the win there was no hiding the level of disgust amongst the Ospreys fans departing the stadium for the way the referee handled that game. Well done lads, I'm just proud we sent them back over the Irish sea having beaten 16 men with our 15.

The ref was bad for both teams. I mean did you see how he reffed the scrums? also it wasn't him who gave the try, it was a welsh tv ref.
nice try at a WUM though.

Shifty wrote:I'm so proud of the lads for winning this game, truth be told the referee was terrible. I thought I'd seen it all last season with Fitzgibbon only refereeing the ospreys and letting Leinster break any rules they wanted. But this ref was probably worse, time and time again Leinster boys were coming in at the side and laying all over the ball which was totally ignored yet I think we managed to do it once and had Duncan sin binned in the middle of the field!

One try they scoured that shouldnt of been awarded while we had one disallowed because Eli was taken out off the ball, then fussell dives on it and the referee decided to award a scrum for a knock on??? There was clearly a Leinster player between Eli and the ball so how the hell he knocked it on was baffeling.

It's hard to have any respect for Irish rugby when every week they seem to bring a blatantly cheating ref with them when they come to the liberty. It's just sad the gutless WRU don't have the balls to deal with these referees and are more concerned with profit margins.

Despite the win there was no hiding the level of disgust amongst the Ospreys fans departing the stadium for the way the referee handled that game. Well done lads, I'm just proud we sent them back over the Irish sea having beaten 16 men with our 15.

Gibson wrote:

Shifty wrote:I'm so proud of the lads for winning this game, truth be told the referee was terrible. I thought I'd seen it all last season with Fitzgibbon only refereeing the ospreys and letting Leinster break any rules they wanted. But this ref was probably worse, time and time again Leinster boys were coming in at the side and laying all over the ball which was totally ignored yet I think we managed to do it once and had Duncan sin binned in the middle of the field!

One try they scoured that shouldnt of been awarded while we had one disallowed because Eli was taken out off the ball, then fussell dives on it and the referee decided to award a scrum for a knock on??? There was clearly a Leinster player between Eli and the ball so how the hell he knocked it on was baffeling.

It's hard to have any respect for Irish rugby when every week they seem to bring a blatantly cheating ref with them when they come to the liberty. It's just sad the gutless WRU don't have the balls to deal with these referees and are more concerned with profit margins.

Despite the win there was no hiding the level of disgust amongst the Ospreys fans departing the stadium for the way the referee handled that game. Well done lads, I'm just proud we sent them back over the Irish sea having beaten 16 men with our 15.

You've got to love this site - I think shifty is english by the way - Ref was shoite all round for both sides

Shiftys been on the sauce I think.....

I'm putting it down to youth and over exuberance speccled with a degree of envy towards the Mighty Leinster Rodders

Shifty is Welsh and attends as many Regional games he can, including ones for teams outside his supported Region. And he's always disliked Irish refs.

Mighty Leinster?! I think you've been on the sauce too Ruby... ....

Morgannwg - I take it satire isn't one of your strengths - Any american blood in you

No such thing as American blood. Bit of Irish unfortunately, Donegal .

Even a casual arm chair viewer like yourself Rodders should know that they are a Mighty Team in Europe

Morgannwg wrote:No such thing as American blood. Bit of Irish unfortunately, Donegal .

My condolensces Morg

Yeh, Irish refs aren't high on shiftys xmas cards list. Still the mighty O's have beaten lil leinster again. Haven't lost to them since 1986 or something.....

Good point Breadvan - at this rate we should not be calling them the cappucino cowboys, more of the lemonade ladies against the mighty O's, even when they bring their own ref

RubyGuby wrote:Even a casual arm chair viewer like yourself Rodders should know that they are a Mighty Team in Europe

Sorry ruby I'm new to this rugby stuff... can't remember that far back....

Yes! Thou shall bow down to our two HC quarter final appearences....

Morgannwg wrote:Shifty is Welsh and attends as many Regional games he can, including ones for teams outside his supported Region. And he's always disliked Irish refs.

All true, though this season I have been watching Kenfig Hill, the Ospreys and also managed to take a peek at RGC1404, and yes guilty as charged I'm sick of tired of Irish teams bringing biased inept referees with them when they visit our stadium, it's like a plague.

Though I did compliment Dangerous Dudley the other week, I never thought I'd see the day when he'd referee a game well.

Shifty - will you see Kenfig Hill play Glynneath?