Jonathan Sexton’s late drop-goal saw European champions Leinster draw with London Irish and knock the English club out of the Heineken Cup. Chris Malone had minutes earlier sent over a dramatic penalty to give Irish an 11-8 lead and the Exiles also missed two late drop-goal attempts. Isa Nacewa’s try gave Leinster an 8-3 lead after penalties from Sexton and Malone, whose own try tied the score.
The result now means that Northampton now qualify instead of London Irish. It was a dramatic ending to what had been an otherwise error-strewn game. Sexton sent over an early penalty after Irish had been penalised from scrum infringement but Malone wasted an opportunity to level, missing from virtually in front of the posts.
Leinster’s fly-half was having an equally erratic day hitting the post with a penalty on the half hour before Irish eventually levelled through Malone, with the European Champions penalised for not retreating. Gordon D’arcy created and finished a fine move for Leinster but his try was disallowed for an earlier forward pass.
From the resulting scrum, which Leinster won against the head, the visitors drove to the London Irish line and eventually passed out to Nacewa on the wing to dive over unchallenged. The conversion was missed but after Leinster’s Cian Healy was sent to the bin for punching Malone was again wide with a penalty.
But he made up for that miss with a try on 65 minutes, stepping inside the Leinster line to bundle over and level the score. Malone however missed with the conversion and although he later sent over a penalty, Sexton responded almost immediately with a long-range drop goal to level the game at 11-11. Irish later missed two drop goals as Leinster held out to draw the game and advance through to the quarter-final stages.