Leinster bounced back from their Champions Cup final defeat by Bordeaux-Begles last week by scoring nine tries in an emphatic 59-10 United Rugby Championship quarter-final win over the Lions at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin.<\/p>\n
Dan Sheehan, Hugo Keenan, James Ryan, Scott Penny, Sam Prendergast, Gus McCarthy and Jimmy O’Brien all crossed for the Irish province, with James Lowe, on his 100th cap, scoring twice.<\/p>\n
The victory books Leo Cullen’s side a place against the Stormers in the second of the tournament’s semi-finals next Saturday (17:30 BST). Glasgow will host the Bulls in the other.<\/p>\n
Both sides came out with huge intent, but it was Leinster who got on the scoreboard first, with Sheehan getting over the whitewash 10 minutes in.<\/p>\n
A line break from Keenan edged the home side close to the try line and a final pass from Jimmy O’Brien found the Ireland hooker on the wing and he was able to ground. Sam Prendergast landed the first of seven successful conversions.<\/p>\n
A well-executed line-out move and a series of quick hands involving Lowe, Rieko Ioane, Keenan and Prendergast eventually found O’Brien, but he was met by three Lions defenders and held up over the line.<\/p>\n
With 15 minutes on the clock, Leinster built attacking momentum and full-back Keenan found space with ease for their second try.<\/p>\n
The home side continued to enjoy the upper hand but were reduced to 14 when prop Thomas Clarkson was sent to the sin-bin just shy of half-time for a dangerous tackle on Nico Steyn.<\/p>\n
Henco van Wyk capitalised on the visitors’ numerical advantage and got over from close range for Ivan van Rooyen’s side’s first try, Chris Smith’s conversion attempt hitting the post.<\/p>\n
Leinster’s response was almost immediate as Joe McCarthy executed a monstrous carry to advance to the cusp of the Lions line.<\/p>\n
Ryan burrowed over from close range and Prendergast’s additional points made it 21-5 at the break.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leinster bounced back from their Champions Cup final defeat by Bordeaux-Begles last week by scoring nine tries in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":614406,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-614405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/614406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}