Bloodgate memories of no interest as Dan Sheehan focuses on Harlequins threat
Dan Sheehan during Leinster Rugby squad training at UCD in Dublin. Pic: Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile
It’s a game and an incident tattooed into the shared history of a tournament that was still known at the time as the Heineken Cup. Like footballers and actors who reach a certain level of fame, it only needed to be known by one, self-evident word.
Bloodgate.
Leinster’s quarter-final was in the balance against Harlequins at The Stoop that day in April of 2009 when the winger Tom Williams feigned an injury by biting down on a fake blood capsule so the hosts could make a substitution and bring Nick Evans back on.
The ruse didn’t work. Evans missed with a late drop goal attempt, Quins lost 6-5 and, eventually, the whole episode led to suspensions for Williams, the director of rugby Dean Richards and physio Steph Brennan, plus a €250,000 club fine.
Ask Dan Sheehan for his memories of all this and his first response is, ‘who?’ “Oh sorry, the pill,” he said, the penny suddenly dropping.
“I actually saw it on social media recently, something about it. Did [Williams] come out and do an interview about it? I don’t remember it happening at the time.”
Harlequins is very much on the Leinster hooker’s mind this week but it’s the current players, like Marcus Smith and Fin Baxter, rather than a meeting 16 years ago, occupying his thoughts ahead of Saturday’s Champions Cup round of 16 tie at Croke Park.
In fairness, he was only 10-years-old when the whole farrago happened. This was in and around the time that his father sat the family down and explained that they would be moving to Romania for work reasons for a time. They stayed for three years.
The two clubs have little enough else in the way of mutual history. There were back-to-back fixtures in the old pool stage back in the 2014/15 season when they claimed a win apiece, and a couple of pre-season friendlies in the years since.
On Saturday they share their biggest stage yet at GAA headquarters.
Sheehan was part of the senior group that stayed behind in Dublin in recent weeks to prepare for this game while another cohort travelled to South Africa for two URC games, and he has enjoyed the job of studying Quins on tape.
“They’re quite an enjoyable team to watch. Really nice attacking shape, score some really nice tries, good starter plays. I think that is something we definitely need to be careful and we’ll be all over.”
Leinster have already dealt comfortably with one attack-minded English side this season having started their latest Champions Cup bid with a stunning 35-12 defeat of Pat Lam’s Bristol Bears at Ashton Gate last December.
Sheehan didn’t play that day, but he was a strong contributor behind the scenes during that spell out with ACL, and he sees Harlequins as a much more pragmatic side in how they exit their own third with the boot before turning to a running attack further up.
The Gallagher Premiership is being overrun with attacking rugby right now - Harlequins’ last game, an away defeat to Bath, produced 75 points – while Super Rugby continues to throw tries around like confetti at a wedding.
Claims that Leinster were an all-singing, all-dancing attacking side were always overdone in years gone by, but there is less of a premium now on flair as the focus under Jacques Nienaber has turned towards an aggressive defensive approach.
Leinster have banged their heads against a glass ceiling in ‘Europe’ time and again since last winning this competition back in 2018 when defeating Racing 92 in Bilbao. Maybe going against that grain will get them over the line this time.
“Hopefully. Obviously you can win games a million different ways. You can go all-out attack and a high-scoring game, it kind of goes 50-50. We sort of pride ourselves on how little access we can give teams.
“It can be quite suffocating when a team comes up against you and you’re not even able to get points on the board. Obviously we’ll strive for that, but we need to be ready for anything.”
If defence is the best form of attack then it can also be the first chink in a team’s mental armour. Leads can be precarious in sport at any level, and Leinster have found themselves unable to hang on at times when building up significant ones.
Losing the final to La Rochelle two seasons ago when leading 17-0 at the Aviva Stadium was the mother of all ways to lose such a big game and Leinster have talked of late about ‘attacking’ the games for the full 80 minutes regardless of any scoreboard.
“We’ve got to keep bringing our game to them and never defend a lead,” said Sheehan. “Or any mindset around having to do something different. It’s all about just attacking every minute of the game until the whistle goes.”
