Leinster v Stormers: Five takeaways as ‘naughty’ visitors rue card trouble against the ‘bottle’ showing defending champions
Joe McCarthy and James Ryan get stuck in for Leinster while, inset, Wandisile Simelane goes on a run for the Stormers
Following a 20-11 win for Leinster over the Stormers in the United Rugby Championship semi-finals, here’s our five takeaways from the tense cross-hemisphere contest at Aviva Stadium.
The top line
This high-stakes collision was given even more of a lift before kick-off when it emerged that the Bulls had upset the top-seeded Glasgow in their earlier semi-final, an ambush that meant whichever team won in Dublin would now host the 2026 final.
With Croke Park the prestigious showpiece venue if Leinster won through, Leo Cullen’s side wasted no time in showing they were initially up for the challenge of eliminating the Stormers.
With 23 minutes gone on a wintry-like day in the Irish capital, the fast-starting defending champions were 13 points to the good, Sam Prendergast tacking a conversion and two penalties onto Rieko Ioane’s eighth-minute try following a difficult start for the visitors.
It wasn’t quite the dire 18 points down situation the Bulls were in early on at Glasgow before producing their stirring match-winning comeback, but they needed to start flexing some muscle and they did.
Adré Smith squirmed over for a 28th-minute unconverted try that was followed by Jurie Matthee’s 35th-minute penalty kick following a scrum collapse, and it left the scoreboard with a very different 13-8 complexion as the teams headed away at the interval to a tunnel bust-up.
Who wanted the result more? Leinster was eventually the answer, but it took a considerable time for this to become clear with the Stormers paying a heavy price for indiscipline.
They got away with the first of their three yellows; rather than Leolin Zas’ needless 47th minute deliberate knock on being the ignition for a game-defining surge, the hosts instead experienced the heart-in-mouth moment of Imad Khan racing clear from his 22.
Leinster needed a Hugo Keenan intervention to salvage that situation, but their scrum issues continued and soon gave Stormers another kick to cut the margin to two and allow the Capetonians to ‘win’ this yellow card period 3-0.
We had now reached the squeaky bum period of a very even-steven contest and it was the South Africans who spectacularly blinked with sub Ruan Ackermann yellow carded for his rash 69th minute breakdown clear-out of Ronan Kelleher.
Within a minute, Jamison Gibson-Park was dancing in under the posts for the result-clinching converted try, and Salmaan Moerat’s carding for an illegal kick of the ball at a breakdown in the lead up to the score left the Stormers all blown out, a development confirmed before the restart with Ackermann’s yellow upgraded to red.
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Travel sting
For all the admirable girth shown by the Stormers in fighting their way back from a sticky 13-point deficit and close to within two points of Leinster 13 minutes into the second half, their URC semi-final effort will be most remembered for a couple of minutes of madness, which left them beaten by nine points and finishing with only 13 players on the pitch.
They were at their best chasing down the Irish team’s lead, but when it came to the challenge of landing a killer blow and going in front, they were found wanting.
Whereas you had, for instance, skipper Ruhan Nel superbly improvising to launch a 50/22 14 minutes from time when only two points separated the sides, they couldn’t execute off the lineout, and when the play went to a breakdown, they were penalised for holding on with Leinster sub Rabah Slimani over the ball.
It was crucial as it triggered the chain of events that resulted in yellow cards for the naughty Stormers either side of the decisive Gibson-Park try – and it left them on the wrong side of the scoreboard and the wrong side of an 11-7 penalty count and a 3-0 card count.
While Stormers’ bench provided enough oomph to keep them in the contest, it didn’t have the collective intelligence to get John Dobson’s side in front, and this latest failure on their travels will sting.
They can’t say they didn’t see it coming, though. They had finished the regular season last month with plenty of regret, only drawing at Ulster and losing at Cardiff in the final two games to finish third and miss out on home semi-final advantage. That was a costly outcome.
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Showing bottle
Here’s a bit of trivia for rugby stats boffins out there. Leinster had played the Stormers five times before this semi-final, but nine of the starters selected by Cullen this weekend and three of their bench had never before taken on the South African franchise in the URC.
This anomaly reflected how the Irish side had treated its matches against the Cape Town club until now – an excuse to rest up their front-line players, talents such as Andrew Porter, Joe McCarthy, James Ryan, Josh van der Flier, Caelan Doris, Gibson-Park and so on.
This was the situation last September when a second-string Leinster were hammered 35-0 at the DHL. Their shadow squad went on the following week to lose at the Bulls, and with a home loss to Munster occurring some weeks later, it was felt that their title defence would be very problematic and that they would have to go on the road in the play-offs.
How completely wrong all these suggestions were. Many months later, they have now won their way through to the 2026 URC final via two knockout matches at the Aviva and the reward is that they will host the re-run of 2025’s final against the Bulls at Croke Park on Dublin’s Northside.
In a season of supposed underachievement in terms of their inconsistent level of play, getting to the URC decider on the back of last month’s brutal first-half Champions Cup final surrender to Bordeaux is a strong reflection on their persisting appetite to succeed despite getting written off.
They had leaders on Saturday evening in the likes of the ball-hungry Doris and Kelleher, as well as Gibson-Park, and it was enough to edge a match they would have lost if their mind wasn’t as strong as it was. They showed bottle and should be complimented.
Leinster will be criticised for attracting an attendance of only 15,346. However, this was their sixth home match in 10 weekends and their fourth fixture in that run not covered by the season tickets they sell to fans covering regular season matches in the URC and two pool games in the Champions Cup.
It will go into the books that Saturday’s attendance was up on last week’s quarter-final crowd of just 9,463 versus the Lions, and it was only just slightly less than the 15,762 present for last season’s semi-final win over Glasgow.
Six-point scrum
Keeping a beady eye on the Leinster scrum became part of the Saturday evening intrigue as the challenge they faced hugely increased with the sad sight of loosehead Porter limping to the sidelines just 22 minutes in.
By that stage, they had already conceded a set-piece penalty through a Thomas Clarkson collapse on the tighthead side in the opposition 22, and Porter’s premature exit heightened the focus as he was replaced by the soon-to-be 21-year-old Alex Usanov, who was making only his ninth first-team appearance.
It was a tall order for the youngster coming up against a South African side with a daunting front row, and the Stormers chased after this part of the Leinster game.
This was there for everyone to see six minutes before the interval when Clarkson collapsed on his team’s put-in five metres from their own line, giving the visitors three points back. The gap was then further reduced in the second-half with a not driving straight infringement.
Six points through two scrum penalties was damaging in a game of tight margins, but Leinster’s decision to get Slimani on the pitch in the 55th minute meant this wound didn’t get worse.
While there was a free-kick against Leinster at the first scrum involving Slimani, followed by the Frenchman holding his right shoulder in pain after the next scrum was completed, the set-piece danger was headed off and it ultimately wasn’t the decisive factor in the semi-final.
That said, the Bulls scrum is way more effective than what the Stormers had to offer, so it will be a key ingredient in Friday week’s final.
Tale of two out-halves
This semi-final was a tale of two young out-halves, one who played and one who couldn’t because of injury, and you headed away from the Aviva wondering whether Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu would have been the difference for the Stormers had he been available.
His understudy Matthee started the game unconvincingly and wasn’t equipped with a match-changing X-factor when the result was in jeopardy during the second half. It was a pity for the South Africans, as it was a contest at that delicate stage that was made for Feinberg-Mngomezulu to grab by the scruff of the neck and make the telling difference.
His absence helped to leave Leinster winners, but the Irish will have plenty to ponder in the days ahead about what way to go with their No.10 selection for the final. Whereas Prendergast revelled in last weekend’s armchair ride in the culling of the Lions, his performance here was far less authoritative.
He also didn’t have the decision-making clout to make sure Leinster kicked for the posts for a 16-8 lead instead of going for the corner for an opportunity they failed to take. He was also mown down in the tackle by Khan in the 22, with possession turned over on the floor in the ruck that ensued.
Prendergast’s second-half effort then failed to punish Stormers for going a man down to their first yellow, and it was significant that he was called ashore with 22 minutes remaining, coach Cullen deciding it was best left to sub Harry Byrne to finish the game.
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