Unflappable Leinster eliminate lacklustre Sharks to book URC semi-final place

Irish juggernauts Leinster were the runaway favourites to win the United Rugby Championship quarter-final and there was little doubt, even after the Sharks landed the first sucker punch, that they’d march into the semi-finals.

They disposed of the Sharks 35-5 with relative ease on Saturday night to end the Sharks’ European season on a whimper. 

So much has been expected from this Sharks team over the last couple of URC seasons but they failed at the quarter-final round again after getting ousted by the Bulls at the same stage at Loftus last year.

AS IT HAPPENED | Leinster v Sharks

The American MVM Holdings project at Kings Park is looking like the Boehly-Clearlake consortium’s investment into English football club Chelsea at the moment, but at least the former only sacked one head coach this season.

It's now up to new head coach John Plumtree to make a silk purse from what is not a sow's ear but a huge sheet of satin.

The Sharks arrived in Dublin with the confidence of a person on death row walking to the electric chair still hoping for a late presidential pardon to spare them from the inevitable. It didn’t come.

A full-strength Sharks team would have been underdogs at the RDS Arena but one without Springboks Siya Kolisi, Eben Etzebeth, Jaden Hendrikse and Curwin Bosch was like a pomeranian picking a fight with a pitbull.

Aside from needing to play beyond the sum of their individual parts, the Sharks needed Leinster to be off-colour and perhaps a small meteor to strike whenever Leinster attacked.

The men from Durban started well enough for South Africans to think a shock might be on the cards. 

Their spark came from a man who will make it impossibly hard for Jacques Nienaber to leave behind on the flight to France for the Rugby