Friday, January 26, 2007

Leinster Vs Llanelli

Just back in the office after the Leinster Vs Llanelli Scarlets rugby game in Donnybrook. Bloody freezing. I'm sitting at my desk still shivering.

It was a scrappy game, I got there early-ish and grabbed a spot just behind the goal posts in the terraces. Leinster were brutal for all of the first half and 5 minutes of the second. Llanelli seemed to just run through them for fun. The crowd around me was pretty quiet as well. At one stage I was the only one in my area shouting for Leinster and I was standing there in a bright red Munster jersey. Bit unfortunate as well since the Llanelli jerseys were red so at first glance I looked like the only Llanelli fan in the terrace.

Leinster were 10-20 down 5 minutes into the second half but they suddenly got a try and Llanelli completely collapsed. For about 20 minutes Leinster got a some of easy scores and the Welsh seemed to have lost all interest in the game. Hopefully they do the same when they meet Munster in the Heineken Cup. They steadied themselves then and suddenly put pressure back on Leinster, though at that stage Leinster knew they had the game won and didn't work too hard. In the end the score was Leinster 44-34 Llanelli.

The match officials were having a bad night as well. The referee seemed to have never heard of the offside rule. The crowd scored one conversion despite the ball clearly going wide by applauding so the linesman just put up his flag. Next came a try which was just short of the line but the crowd started cheering and the ref, who was on the other side of the ruck, gave the score. Finally apparently at the other end of the pitch the ref completely missed a high tackle but called the game back based solely on the chants of the crowd.

I must go to the next game on February 16th. The nice thing about the Magners League is that it is still easy to get tickets and the games are held in Donnybrook which is across the road from my office.

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