Kearney converts his drop goal attempt against Castres on Sunday
Leinster’s Rob Kearney marked his 50th Heineken Cup appearance in style on Sunday with a man of the match performance away to Castres in the Stade Pierre Antoine.
Despite trailing 14-0 after 25 minutes, the province fought their way back into the game to win by 29-22 in the end.
Key to that comeback were two Jimmy Gopperth tries, followed by a monster 42m drop goal from Kearney that put Leinster in front for the first time.
A Jordi Murphy try completed the comeback with Kearney insisting his side showed great character to ground out the win.
“After those first 20, 25 minutes, we needed to show a lot of character,” the Willville man told Sky Sports.
“Teams that don’t have that sort of character won’t come back from those 14-0 scores. We knew if we kept building, had confidence in our own ability, kept going through some phases.
“We may not be the biggest side in Europe but we will always back our intensity, that if we keep building phases we will break teams down.”
Kearney agreed that Leinster were assisted by having the wind at their backs in the second half but added that ‘we still had to play a huge amount of rugby’.
“There were times there that we were playing out of our own 22, to try build phases and score tries,” he said. “When the opportunity was there and we felt there was a sniff to make some ground with ball in hand, we did that too.”
Commenting on his drop goal, Kearney said: “I’ve kicked some ugly drop goals and that’s certainly up there but they all count.”
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