LEINSTER were rampant at the RDS on Friday night with some of the younger players continuing to build the positive reputations that they have been developing under Joe Schmidt’s tutelage.
The Ronan O’Gara/Johnny Sexton debate may soon become a three-way race with Ian Madigan again showing what talent he has.
He is only slight but has great pace and an ability to step off either foot while he can pass accurately off both his left and right hands.
It has worked out well for Madigan that the New Zealand outhalf signed to back up Johnny Sexton suffered an injury at the start of the season and this has given Ian more game time than he might otherwise have received.
Dave Kearney chipped in with two tries and Eoin O’Malley and Fergus McFadden could be a centre partnership to follow the Gordon D’Arcy and Brian O’Driscoll partnership.
As a contest, the fixture was ruined by the Welsh Rugby Union’s decision to play a test match against Australia on a Rabo-Direct weekend.
This left the Cardiff Blues seriously understrength and they conceded 52 points, which is the most they have ever conceded in the Celtic League.
Even a full-strength Cardiff side would have struggled against a Leinster team in this kind of mood.
Their pace and skills in contact are a joy to watch and they now face Bath home and away in the Heineken Cup; they are more than capable of getting eight points, if not more, from these two fixtures which will put them in control of the group going into the January games against Montpellier and Glasgow.
Munster should have won in the Liberty Stadium and were pounding the Ospreys line for the final minutes but needed the try for the win rather than a Ronan O’Gara drop goal or penalty this week.
Munster should have got the match-winning try when they had a series of scrums five metres out. The referee awarded them four penalties and a penalty try looked a formality only for the ref to award a penalty against BJ Botha for dropping the scrum.
It makes no sense for Munster to drop a scrum at this stage of the match and it just showed once again how hard it is to get a penalty try when you play away from home.
The Munster management will be hoping that the scan on Dougie Howlett’s injury shows that he won’t be out for too long.
He has been in great form recently and has been scoring tries on a regular basis. With Tommy Bowe out of contract this summer you would have to imagine that Munster will get the cheque book out and try and entice Tommy home.
The big sports news from last weekend was the sad passing of the current Welsh manager Gary Speed who took his own life last Sunday morning.
A lot of former players seem to struggle post-playing with the lost of the involvement in a dressing-room environment and the buzz that you get from playing.
Alan Quinlan is currently working on building awareness about depression and his experiences of it during his life. They say one in four adults will struggle with depression at some stage in their lives and its important that we get rid of the stigma that surrounds depression and make people aware that it’s okay to seek help.
Tullow travelled to Wicklow for a first and seconds fixture and we were unfortunate to only come home with two losing bonus points.
We have been training very hard this season and we are very close to turning the screw and getting on a run of wins.
Hopefully, this weekend when we play Portlaoise at home on Saturday we can get the performance and win that the players deserve for their efforts.