Jacques Nienaber's fresh confrontational edge key to Leinster's sweet revenge over La Rochelle

Leinster showed their quality last weekend with a dominant win over La Rochelle at the Aviva Stadium.

There were a couple of key moments where the game got away from the French side, and had they managed to force a stop the game could have looked a bit different. However, that's easier said than done and there only looked to be one winner from the very start.

Leinster dominated possession and La Rochelle struggled to exit from their own half, even in the opening ten minutes. A fast start to the second half through Ryan Baird’s try was the winning of the game.

There were huge positives for Leinster: winning the game without James Ryan’s leadership in the pack and at the lineout, Jamie Osborne’s left foot took the heat off James Lowe from an exit perspective and Ross Byrne dealt with the physical targeting in midfield, shrugging it off in one of his best performances to date.

Jamison Gibson-Park was in menacing form too, adding to his display the week before against Leicester.

Leinster put down a serious marker with their physicality against a more powerful French pack. If they go on to win the tournament, they’ll have to dispatch Northampton, who will challenge them technically, and then possibly go back to that template of beating a powerful French pack if Toulouse manage to overcome Harlequins.

Leinster have removed some of the question marks over their performance obstacles, but it isn’t plain sailing towards their fifth star just yet. They’re more than capable of achieving it, however there’s enough still standing in their way.

Not to discredit Leinster, they were impressively nasty in the contact area to dominate La Rochelle, but the opposition looked tired. The travelling from South Africa to Cork via Paris to allow for