Cardiff suffered their first defeat of the season as Leinster ran in a 29-5 victory at Dublin\u2019s Laya Arena.<\/p>\n
Corniel van Zyl made seven changes to his starting XV and the Welsh club were also dealt an injury blow with Wales great Taulupe Faletau pulling out before kick-off.<\/p>\n
Faletau was replaced by Taine Basham who put in an outstanding individual performance.<\/p>\n
Leinster scored five tries in total with Hugo Keenan, Jimmy O’Brien (twice), Jack Conan and Jamie Osborne touching down to secure a bonus point victory for the Irish province.<\/p>\n
Mason Grady scored Cardiff’s only try in what was a spirited performance by the Welsh club despite the final scoreline.<\/p>\n
Ireland full-back Keenan opened the scoring with a sensational individual try before Conan powered over from short-range soon after.<\/p>\n
Leinster’s pack were in complete control as O’Brien touched down twice out wide.<\/p>\n
Callum Sheedy caught the Leinster defence napping with a cross-field kick for Grady to score Cardiff’s only points.<\/p>\n
Leinster led 22-5 at the break and Cardiff showed tremendous fight in the second-half.<\/p>\n
It took the hosts 37 minutes of the second-half to score their first points as Osborne touched down to secure victory.<\/p>\n
Leinster: Keenan; Kenny, Ringrose, J Osborne, J O’Brien; Prendergast, Coffey; Usanov, Sheehan (capt), Furlong, J McCarthy, Ryan, Deegan, Penny, Conan. Replacements: Kelleher, Dooley, Clarkson, Spicer, Ericson, Gunne, Gabriel, Henshaw.<\/p>\n
Cardiff: Matty Young; Jacob Beetham, Harri Millard, Le Roux Malan, Mason Grady; Callum Sheedy, Aled Davies; Danny Southworth, Liam Belcher (capt), Javan Sebastian, Josh Mcally, Teddy Williams, Alex Mann, Dan Thomas, Taulupe Faletau. Replacements: Evan Lloyd, Rhys Barratt, Sam Wainwright, George Nott, Semisi Paea, Johan Mulder, Jarrod Evans, Steffan Emanuel<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cardiff suffered their first defeat of the season as Leinster ran in a 29-5 victory at Dublin\u2019s Laya…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":798778,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[10579,5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-798777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-cardiff-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\/798777","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=798777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/798778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=798777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=798777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=798777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}