It was hard not to repurpose that in Ballsbridge on Saturday evening. Leinster were 19-point favourites to beat a Northampton side sitting seventh in the Premiership and missing a handful of key players. They were playing at home in front of 40,000 of their fans and their own casualty ward was all but empty. The province had been landed gently into the much easier side of the draw. Their previous two knockout games had produced 114 points for and none against. They hadn’t conceded a Champions Cup point in 200 minutes of rugby. Win here and they would play the final in Cardiff. A ‘home’ venue in all but name. Leo Cullen had brought in the world’s most renowned defensive guru in Jacques Nienaber, a two-time World Cup-winning coach. He had persuaded Tyler Bleyendaal to unplug his highly-developed attacking brain from Wellington and transfer it to Dublin. RG Snyman, Jordie Barrett and Rabah Slimani had been attracted into a dressing-room already replete with the bulk of a world-class Irish side thanks to the world’s best and most consistent supply line of young talent. “The bookies said Leinster by 30 points, but here we are,” said Tommy Freeman post-match. The England wing was electric on the day, his first-half hat-trick cutting deep into the pre-match expectations and Leinster’s belief. Henry Pollock was stunningly good in the back row, his own scintillating try buttressing a bravura individual effort. Fin Smith was much the better of two young out-half’s believed to be battling it out for a place on the British and Irish Lions squad due to be announced by Andy Farrell on Thursday, but this went deeper than the billboard faces. How many of the punters in the Aviva had heard of Saints’ two-times Wallaby capped flanker Josh Kemeny before his superb display here? Did the full-back James Ramm sound like a mispronounced Spanish golfer before he claimed a crucial second-half try? The Leinster head coach gave due praise to Northampton whose electric attacking play, most notably on the counter, cut through Nienaber’s defence like knife through butter. So much so that the hosts failed with 36 tackles, 27% of their total. Down 27-15 at the break, Leinster ‘won’ the second-half 19-10 but it was too little too late against a side that pulled through despite the concession of 14 penalties and three yellow cards, the last of them coming in a helter-skelter end game. Then came the carps and the questions. Why did they start Barrett, Andrew Porter and Jack Conan, three of their best players, on the bench? Why didn’t they take three points when offered the chance, twice, in the closing stages and reset for extra-time? Are they killing themselves with kindness by resting their big names so often in the URC? Were they right to rewire their entire DNA with Nienaber’s arrival? Is this now, as it seems, a mental block that paralyses them at the worst possible times? And, were Leinster wrongly denied a winning try? It looked that way. Referee Pierre Brousset correctly disallowed Ross Byrne’s touch down in the corner at the death because he played the ball off his feet but he then sent Alex Coles to the bin for stopping Josh van der Flier from crossing the lines moments before. Is that not grounds for a penalty try? Slimani, for one, couldn’t understand why not, Cullen opted against making any public complaint. Leinster have now lost four finals, two semis and a quarter-final since winning a fourth star in 2018. There seems no end to their agony, or to the variations in cruelty. The bottom line is that they just haven’t been good enough. “We would have loved to have won more. If you ask every team in the competition they would have loved to have won more, but we know how bloody hard it is to do it… The pain that we’re in at the moment. It’s a horrible feeling for everyone,” said Cullen. There will be no act of surrender. The head coach insisted that he remains the right man and “committed” to the task of winning a first trophy in four years. Time and again he spoke of the need now to ape the Saints who lost this semi last year then won their domestic title. Still, Zebre at home in the URC next weekend will be a hard sell.. For everyone. “But that’s character as well,” he explained. “You just need to see character and we have amazing character in the group. I’m a big believer in the group we have and [that] if we get across the line we‘ll go on to win many more trophies.” Leinster: H Keenan, T O’Brien, G Ringrose, R Henshaw, J Lowe; S Prendergast, J Gibson-Park; C Healy, D Sheehan, T Furlong; RG Snyman, J McCarthy; M Deegan, J van der Flier, C Doris. Replacements: A Porter for Healy (20); J Conan for Deegan (44); J Barrett for Henshaw (50); R Slimani for Furlong (54); R Baird for Doris (57); R Kelleher for Sheehan (64); R Byrne for Prendergast (77); S Prendergast for O’Brien (80). Northampton Saints: J Ramm; T Freeman, F Dingwall), R Hutchinson, T Litchfield; F Smith, A Mitchell; E Iyogun, C Langdon, T Davison; T Mayanavanua, A Coles; J Kemeny, H Pollock, J Augustus. Replacements: H Walker for Litchfield (32-36); E Millar Mills for Davison (49); T West for Iyogun (61); T James for Mitchell (64-)T Lockett for Mayanavanua (65); A Scott-Young for Litchfield (68). H Walker, T West, E Millar Mills, T Lockett, C Munga, A Scott-Young, T James, T Seabrook. Referee: P Brousset ( Fra).