NO ONE does brooding menace quite like Andy Robinson, and after a display of incompetent refereeing and abject tackling against Leinster yesterday afternoon he was at his slitty-eyed, Lee Van Cleef-esque best.
He wasn't just angry, he was Vesuvian. Seriously, at one stage in the post-match press conference, it looked as if there was steam coming out of the top of his head. If he'd gone off like a volcano, lava spurting from all orifices, no-one would have
been entirely surprised. Robinson is a man of strong emotions and, stung by the manner of this Heineken Cup defeat, he visibly struggled to keep them in check.
"It was a match we had to win so I'm bitterly disappointed," he said afterwards. "We let down Edinburgh's supporters and I take full responsibility. Leinster were there for the taking but we missed tackles, dropped off tackles and they finished us off beautifully.
"The first-half performance from a professional rugby team was unacceptable. To concede four tries in the manner we did will never be acceptable. If we defend like that we don't stand any chance of winning any rugby matches, ever. We could talk about the referee but that's not why we lost this match. For the sake of Edinburgh Rugby we need to show that we want to play for the shirt. I'm not taking anything away from Leinster, but they just capitalised on our mistakes."
It's not as if we didn't know what the great man thought by the end of this match. Those of us in the press box at the back of the stand could see and hear Robinson letting off steam throughout a game in which he appeared to drift in and out of sanity. At one stage in the second half, when Edinburgh were beginning to look as if they might drag themselves back into the game, only to find Leinster giving away yet another penalty, he came storming out of his glass billet at the back of the stand and screamed in the direction of the pitch: "Every time! Every bloody time we get behind them they give away a penalty!"
Robinson, outraged by the lack of sanctions for Leinster's cynicism, nipped down to the sidelines to remonstrate with the fourth official, although it's worth pointing out that stand-in referee Rob Debney's rank rottenness was without boundaries. The man in the middle had it all: he could ignore outrageous forward passes, knock-ons and offsides, could bemuse fans and players alike with strange decisions delivered late and accompanied by incomprehensible hand signals.
He even managed to make a mess of one of the few decisions he gave in Edinburgh's favour, when Felipe Contepomi popped up in Edinburgh's back line deep in the visitors' 22. Sure the Argentinian had the yellow card coming for a piece of skullduggery that would have done Maradona proud, but even the most one-eyed Edinburgh supporter would struggle to argue that his intervention stopped an absolutely certain try. Still, to the obvious surprise of even the home side, he gave the penalty try anyway. Oh, and then he failed to award a penalty try for Chris Whitaker's cynical slap-down.
Not that the referee was the reason for Edinburgh's loss. That lay squarely in the Edinburgh players' decision not to make any tackles in the first half. In fairness to Robbo's men, Edinburgh haven't been exactly hospitable to the boys from Dublin in the recent past and this beautiful balmy day at Murrayfield in the biggest club rugby tournament in the world was a surely a suitable occasion on which to make amends for those past beatings. It was obviously not the sort of day on which you'd want to be doing too much tackling. Like all the most memorable games, the components that went into a disastrous first half of rugby in which Leinster scored four comedy tries was a team effort – Edinburgh were collectively rubbish. No one was immune; not even usually faultless skipper Mike Blair. And Leinster took advantage. Man of the match Rocky Elsom may have made hay, but even Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail would have looked good against tackling of this ineptitude.
The full article contains 722 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
