Leinster’s habit of winning may have contributed to their disappointing collapse against La Rochelle in Saturday’s European Champions Cup final, says Bernard Jackman.
The Blues stormed out to a 17-nil lead in the early stages before they were reeled in by Ronan O’Gara’s side across the final hour of the decider at the Aviva.
Despite their poor second half showing, the Irish province did have a chance to overturn their deficit in the dying stages of the tie.
With La Rochelle holding the slimmest of leads, Leinster finally got a chance in the opposition 22 but were unable to making anything of their opportunity.
Instead of making for a kick between the posts that would put them back in the lead, they kept the ball in their hand before Michael Ala’alatoa was then sent off for a high challenge off a ruck.
Looking back over the game in the days after, Jackman feels that those few minutes of the game could have been vital for a Leinster victory.
‘The problem is, and this sounds terrible and I’m sure they do, but I don’t know if they to go into their drop goal drill often,’ he told the RTE rugby podcast about Ross Byrne deciding not to take a drop goal.
‘If you go back to the week before, Munster had five or six goal line attacks that they didn’t score from against Leinster. In Crowley’s mind it was “we’ve got the ball back and got inside their 22, the odds of me scoring a drop goal are higher than us getting into the 22 and scoring”.
‘Whereas Leinster in the first 15 minutes had converted territory into tries or penalty advantage.’
‘Remember when New Zealand lost in Cardiff to France? After that, they made the drop goal and how to engineer a drop goal part of their weekly regime in case they needed it again.
‘It’s definitely something Leinster didn’t look like they had a call for. They obviously have a call for it, but it’s not something that’s drilled into them.
‘They probably said the percentage odds were they score a try or get a penalty, rather than score a drop goal which is higher risk.
‘I think in hindsight, they’re going to have to say ‘if we come up against a team we can’t overrun, we need to have that in our locker.’