Leinster win shows how rugby is a game of instinct

For all of the painstaking detail that goes into curating a gameplan, sometimes you just can't beat good instincts.

Rugby has never been more about the details, and Leinster have been among the market leaders when it comes to that in recent seasons, but their 20-17 Investec Champions Cup semi-final win over the Northampton Saints was achieved via the gut. In the crunch moments, smart players did smart things when they didn't have much time to think.

That's not to say it was a vintage Leinster performance. It wasn't. Almost letting a 20-3 lead slip in a home semi-final would have been a crushing blow for a side which most expected to cruise through to the final, and the looks of relief on their faces after seeing out those final nervous moments said it all.

The deciding passages of play were instinctive. Jamison Gibson-Park's quick-tap penalty and pass to James Lowe provided the opening score of the game, when there were a safe three points on offer. Five minutes later he threw a slap at a loose ball which landed in the lap of his winger to score again.

Lowe's third try came after a wonderful passage of unstructured play in which Tadhg Furlong, Dan Sheehan and Jamie Osborne all threw offloads to keep the move alive, while in the middle of it all Ryan Baird turned a bad pass into a 30 metre gain by foraging for space infield (below).

Those instinctive plays are all well and good when the game is going your way, but when the result was in the balance, it was that savvy inclination that proved decisive.

With 90 seconds left to play, Leinster were on the ropes. Leading by three, the Saints had broken upfield and were just under 30 metres out from the line when Temo Mayanavanua brought the ball into contact, only for Caelan Doris