Leinster deliver Champions Cup statement with 10-try Harlequins thrashing | Champions Cup

The Leinster prop Andrew Porter popped the words “small margins” into his immediate reaction to a landslide win when Harlequins were buried under blue coloured earth. We know what he meant. Leinster’s unrequited love of European rugby, since winning the Champions Cup in 2018, has twisted and turned on a few of the moments the prop was talking about.

But not this one. Not this extravaganza of continuous rugby that started with the away side owning the first 10 minutes – and then getting lost – and gradually unfolded into an all you can eat buffet with tries on the menu. Not quite the perfect 10 at the finish, but not a lot wrong with it either.

“I suppose we just want to get the best out of ourselves, out of each other and as a team,” Porter said. “We gelled quite well and we’ve done that since coming back from the Six Nations. It’s about pushing on from here and I’m incredibly excited about it.”

Unlike Quins, they looked like they were enjoying themselves, too. Their coach, Jacques Nienaber, has had to carry the load dumped on Leinster over their defence-oriented shape under his direction. This looked like a comfortable and functional balance. But it starts on how you stop the opposition.

Leinster’s go-to party game these days is about sacking opponents behind enemy lines. Less Call of Duty and more Fill Your Boots. They did a fair bit of that in the opening 40 minutes to set the tone. Then they developed the trend to include skittling lads out of the way when Leinster were carrying.

That was key to the opening try – Dan Sheehan hanging out wide and then running over Leigh Halfpenny – from Sam Prendergast, and three minutes later in the long and impressive build up to Joe McCarthy running over for five points at the Hill 16 end. In a number of Harlequins players coming off second-best the captain, Alex Dombrandt, suffered with and without the ball, in collisions with Josh van der Flier and Jamison Gibson-Park.

The No 8 looked lost. Any contact was being determined by the home team who revelled in the positive impacts. You cannot win games in the face of that kind of onslaught and Quins were all over the shop trying to plug the leaks.

The next stop for Leinster is a quarter-final across town in the Aviva Stadium on Friday, against Glasgow. Having picked up a nice wedge from the 55,267 who got full value from this feast it will be interesting to see how many come back for more. Big paydays are what facilitate big signings such as RG Snyman, Jordie Barrett and Rabah Slimani. Now we are at the business end of a meandering competition Leinster need to make those investments pay before it morphs into something else again. Win it while it is just about recognisable.

If you were conducting the Quins review you would not say they looked anything like they were supposed to – bar the opening 10 minutes when they passed up a handy three points for a kick to the corner. Fruitless and arguably feckless, too.

So, that gave us a 70-minute siege. At half-time it was 19-0 – not always a game-killing margin but in this case the point of interest was in whether or not Leinster could wipe the floor with their opponents.

It would have needed a dramatic swing in battle basics to get Quins into the competitive category. No chance.

So who was the most effective? The man of the match award went to Van der Flier. It could easily have been James Lowe. Or Jamie Osborne, who is not an automatic starter for Ireland, but should be an easy pick for Andy Farrell in the Lions squad.

If you put a premium on having a booming left boot in your armoury, with a skill range and versatility of a very high order, then Osborne ticks all those boxes. Given the amount of star quality on show he did well to get noticed.