IT WAS THE kind of audacious move that made Leinster fans giddy about Ian Madigan’s prospects to begin with.
Shaping to gently and conventionally tap the ball out for a five metre line-out, the Blackrock tyro tilted his body, showed off his gaelic football skills and soloed the ball before diving across the try-line.
It’s an embarrassing situation for a pack, focusing for the heavy lifting that is defending a maul to come shortly and instead find your pocket picked. Still, we had to ask Robbie Diack: ‘just what happened there?’
“I think they had planned that,” said the Ireland international, “the team started walking back and first I thought they were going to go for poles and some of us thought they were going for touch to try and maul it.
“I suppose it’s something that I haven’t experienced on the field before. It was well played by them and Mads took the try well, but we live and learn from those mistakes we made and hopefully it never happens again.”
Sitting alongside the South African back row, head coach Neil Doak said:
“We just fell asleep. When you play against Leinster you have to make sure you’re on the money all the time. You can’t switch off and unfortunately we fell asleep on the line there.
“Look, it’s something that we talked about in the week as well, just being ready. I suppose that’s the risk that you take, Ian took that and got the rewards.”
The Ulster duo were wrong on one point. It was not a pre-planned play. This was Madigan showing the freedom to ‘play it as you see it’ that Leinster players say Matt O’Connor has given them this season.
“Everybody was [surprised],” said Jordi Murphy, “he even told us to get ready for the line-out, so [Devin Toner] called us all in, getting a call in and the next thing he was over.
“That’s Ian for you, he’s got that X-factor and he fooled everyone. Not just them, but us as well.”
