Leinster Team Talk/Gossip/Rumours Thread.

CouchSmart

In a game without so many front liners, we need all the experience we can get, hence Strauss and Berne.

roycon

eamon sheridan is coming back from injury. i know hes only got 3 caps but hes still 6'4 and over 17 stone. could be used at first centre

roycon

as you can probably tell i have a huge bias towards young players but its also worth mentioning that other clubs will also have their players away at the world cup at the same time and two magners league losses isnt the end of the world

RMD

roycon wrote: »

as you can probably tell i have a huge bias towards young players but its also worth mentioning that other clubs will also have their players away at the world cup at the same time and two magners league losses isnt the end of the world

We had an awful start to this season in the Magners and we're 3rd now, don't see why people are worried. Only difference finishing first makes over 4th really is having a home semi and final. There's no problem having a bias towards younger players, when situations like that arise it's the perfect opportunity to give the younger players a run.

sock puppet

Will Conway be available for selection? I'd have thought he'd be with the under 20s again.

wixfjord

I think we're sitting pretty for a home semi, but beating the shoite out of Aironi would certainly help!

If you look at it, we've 9 games left, of which 7 you'd be pretty confident of a win (5 home and two away to Aironi and Dragons), while the Cardiff away game could go either way (seem to rem we beat them last year away during the 6N) and the Munster away game, is well, Munster away.

Don't think we'll get first though, 10 points is fairly big, unless we beat them in Thomond. That being said, if we did beat them em away, they have to go to Wales three times (and not to Newport either), so still a chance of first hopefully. Just shows you how skewed our ML fixtures are this year.

Thu 10 Feb 19:05
Leinster v Aironi Royal Dublin Society RTE
Sat 19 Feb 18:30
Blues v Leinster Cardiff City Stadium S4C/RTE
Fri 25 Feb 19:10
Leinster v Treviso Royal Dublin Society RTE
Fri 4 Mar 19:35
Leinster v Scarlets Royal Dublin Society TG4/BBCw
Sun 27 Mar 14:30
Dragons v Leinster Rodney Parade S4C/RTE
1/2/3 Apr

Munster v Leinster Thomond Park Stadium

15/16/17 Apr

Leinster v Ulster Royal Dublin Society

22/23/24 Apr

Aironi v Leinster Stadio Zaffanella

6/7/8 May

Leinster v Warriors Royal Dublin Society

CIARAN_BOYLE

wixfjord wrote: »

I think we're sitting pretty for a home semi, but beating the shoite out of Aironi would certainly help!

If you look at it, we've 9 games left, of which 7 you'd be pretty confident of a win (5 home and two away to Aironi and Dragons), while the Cardiff away game could go either way (seem to rem we beat them last year away during the 6N) and the Munster away game, is well, Munster away.

I gotta agree, Leinster have already played the toughest part of their schedule, a home semi is pretty likely. That said doing the business away to Cardiff would put a serious claim to it.

sock puppet wrote: »

Will Conway be available for selection? I'd have thought he'd be with the under 20s again.

Has the U20 squad been named. I that player in serious contention for provincial selection during the 6Ns may be left with the provinces since development of players is more important than winning the U20 competition

sock puppet

CIARAN_BOYLE wrote: »

Has the U20 squad been named. I that player in serious contention for provincial selection during the 6Ns may be left with the provinces since development of players is more important than winning the U20 competition

Trouble is then the under 20s will be without their most talented players. There's probably 3 or 4 maybe who'd have a realistic shot of starting for their provinces?

durkadurka

I reckon the target should be 14 points for the 4 6 nations games. Three home wins and a couple of bonuses from wherever.

Hopefully anyone not in the Ireland 22 will be released.

The squad will be really tested though. Handy enough run in.

funky penguin

Great interview with SOB in the Sunday Times today if anyone has a chance to read it. Highlights include talking cattle with John Hayes, and a right hook to a Saracen's A player two years ago....."I'll show you spuds!". Seems coaching comes naturally to him (he's in charge of Tullow RFC 1st XV) and is a bit of an entrepreneur, selling his granny's seeded bread to the Leinster squad for €3 a pop - but it's okay, they're "very big loaves".

I like him more and more.

liam12989

have u any link for this,would love to read that too

funky penguin

Sorry, was looking for it online but as far as I can see, I need a subscription to the times online.

Gelio

funky penguin wrote: »

Great interview with SOB in the Sunday Times today if anyone has a chance to read it. Highlights include talking cattle with John Hayes, and a right hook to a Saracen's A player two years ago....."I'll show you spuds!". Seems coaching comes naturally to him (he's in charge of Tullow RFC 1st XV) and is a bit of an entrepreneur, selling his granny's seeded bread to the Leinster squad for €3 a pop - but it's okay, they're "very big loaves".

I like him more and more.

sounds good


he is one of those very likeable players

durkadurka

Yeah he's a great guy from what I see from all those man of the match interviews!

Also gives the lie to the d4 stereotype.

roycon

its unlikely conway will be released for the six nations but if he is it will only be for the france and england games. the word on the street....

funky penguin

durkadurka wrote: »

Yeah he's a great guy from what I see from all those man of the match interviews!

Also gives the lie to the d4 stereotype.

Peter O'Reilly was the interviewer and he briefly went into this as well, though not with SOB personally.

Just talking about how SOB has come at the perfect time for the Leinster branch as they attempt to spread their wings from the confines of D4. Poster boy for blue culchies basically.

GerM

Carlow's first Irish rugby international of the modern era will let his rugby do the talking on his Six Nations debut in Italy on Saturday

Rome provides a fittingly gladiatorial backdrop next Saturday, when Sean O’Brien makes his first Six Nations start — though his heroic qualities don’t necessarily require a grand setting. Leinster teammates first noticed them in leafy Hertfordshire two seasons ago, when Leinster A played Saracens A at Old Albanians RFC.

That day, O’Brien was an innocent bystander when a row broke out, only to be drawn centre-stage by Dan Scarborough, the former England wing. Perhaps keen to impress his forwards, Scarborough hurtled towards the 21-year-old, grabbed him by the throat and advised him, with great originality, to “get off back to Ireland, Paddy, and eat some spuds.”

Sitting in the Ireland team hotel in Limerick last Tuesday, O'Brien smiled at the memory of his response: “I told him, ‘I’ll show you spuds.’ And then I hit him on the jaw with a right hook, so I did.”

Quite a ‘punch-line’ that, and all the more memorable for being delivered in a broad Tullow accent. This is one of the beauties of Sean O’Brien, up there alongside his uncanny ability to appear unannounced on a scrum-half’s shoulder, running at a fair lick for such a lump of a lad: his sentences never end with that annoying mid-Atlantic upward inflection? No, Carlow’s first Irish rugby international of the modern era sounds like, well, someone from Carlow.

While he plays ball for a living, O’Brien knows what it is to spend a day on a tractor, cutting silage. His emergence is perfectly timed for Leinster’s marketing staff, who are acutely aware of the need to promote the brand beyond south Dublin and into the province’s more far-flung corners. Naturally, he made an appearance on their behalf at the National Ploughing Championships in Athy last September.

So while he does a more than passable impersonation of Jamie Heaslip on the pitch, he is an entirely different animal off it — no espressos, catch phrases, body-piercing, or Twitter account. “I don’t tweet, no,” he says. “And I won’t be, either.”

He wouldn’t have the time. What he does have is phenomenal energy and generosity, also a sharp entrepreneurial sense. Last summer, having already helped Tullow’s Gaelic footballers with their fitness training, O’Brien set up fitness boot camps for all-comers in Carlow town. Sixty-five people turned up to the first eight-week course, 115 to the second. Soon he had army pals delegated to run similar camps in Portlaoise and Newbridge.

Meanwhile, he has 25 suckling cows on the family farm two miles outside Tullow. “They’re Belgian Blues,” he says, by way of clarification. “I actually sold a few of them recently. I’ll let my father look after them now, ‘cause they’re a full-time job. But myself and John Hayes (Munster’s resident farmer) are always talking about cattle and stuff.”

Other schemes are still on the go. A few weeks back, he placed a note on the wall in the Leinster dressing room offering home-made seeded bread, baked by his granny, Evelyn O’Toole. “It’s lovely, so it is,” he says. “I brought up 25 loaves the next day and now I have to bring them every week. It’s €3 for the seeded bread — but they’re very big loaves.”

The really impressive bit is that he still finds time to train Tullow RFC’s first XV, who are on a winning streak in Leinster League Division 1B, though underdogs in a south-east derby in Enniscorthy this afternoon. O’Brien will be there, naturally.

His father played in a Tullow pack including five other O’Briens at one stage in the 1980s. “There was the O’Briens of the Bog Lane — that’s us — and then there was the O’Briens of The Hollow,” explains O’Brien junior. They could always tell he had leadership capabilities. Even when he moved to Dublin a few years back, for a sports management degree in UCD and a place in the Leinster Academy, the club asked him if he’d help coach the first XV even though he was only 20.

“I was asked to give a hand, like,” he says, “but I’d rather be involved in something fully than just going down every now and again, y’know? The first thing I did was call a players’ meeting at the start of the season. I said to them: ‘Look, I’m a lot younger than most of you. All I want to do is to try and develop different skills if I can. I’ve great respect for you and I expect the same in return.’”

It seems to have worked. Two seasons on, he’s still making the 100-mile trip from Dublin at least once a week and sometimes further on Sundays, which says as much about O’Brien’s generosity as about the strength of his roots in the local community. “Sean O’Brien is Tullow Rugby Club,” says club president, PJ Haskins. “He’s a good country lad, in that he couldn’t say no to anyone. Whether it was doing something on the farm or helping out with a team, he’d be there for you.”

As a budding coach, it’s no surprise he has a rapport with Joe Schmidt, who described him recently as a “rough diamond”, and who was understandably delighted when he ignored offers from England and France to sign a contract that will keep him with Leinster until 2015 at least. With every Heineken Cup man-of-the-match award — three during the pool stages — his stock kept rising.

He obviously made an early impression on Schmidt, who made O'Brien captain for a pre-season game against Wasps. The admiration is mutual. O’Brien’s development into a more sophisticated player isn’t just down to the natural maturing process. He puts his increased speed down to plyometrics, leg-weights and sled-pulling. The improved skills and decision-making must have something to do with the advice he’s receiving from Schmidt and his technical men.

Leinster’s training has changed in that there are fewer drills, and more games, all designed to replicate match situations. “It’s more specific to the game, the way Joe coaches,” says O'Brien. “It is something everyone is enjoying, having those little games. They’re serious in one way but they’re good for your head, like. They put you in different situations that you’ll probably get on the pitch.

“I used to look to run over a fella and hurt him than anything else. That was completely my thing, until I came into the Academy. You soon change when you’re getting smashed back on your arse. Now I’m hitting holes and looking for good lines. My handling is something I’ve been trying to develop, and my linking with the backs. A couple of years ago, I might have tried to off-load but it probably wouldn’t have come off. Now, I’d be confident off-loading in any situation." Getting a close-up on Italy’s skipper Sergio Parisse next Saturday should enhance his development further. He says he is completely comfortable at No 8, having played there most of the way up.

While he is an inch or two smaller than Heaslip, and a less obvious lineout target, you could argue he is most effective at the back of the scrum. When everyone is fit, the selection of the Ireland back row will be intriguing.

Whatever happens, O’Brien’s Tullow-ness will be undimmed. The town’s image suffered badly last year when RTE aired a documentary which depicted the men-folk as lushes and layabouts. He adores the place and regales his Leinster teammates with all the local mythologies.

They love to hear about one Lar Nail, whose genius is the enormity of his appetite for food. “Some man to eat, so he is,” says O’Brien, maybe thickening the accent for effect. “Lar Nail’s such a good man to eat that he brings a flask of tea and a basket of sandwiches to bed with him, so he does.”

O’Brien’s own narrative promises to extend some way beyond the parish limits.

JustinDee

GerM wrote: »

Carlow's first Irish rugby international of the modern era will let his rugby do the talking on his Six Nations debut in Italy on Saturday

He isn't "Carlow's first Irish rugby international of the modern era".

durkadurka

Who is?

JustinDee

durkadurka wrote: »

Who is?

Like Bernard Jackman, "Carlow's first ... etc", he is from Tullow.

wixfjord

JustinDee wrote: »

Like Bernard Jackman, "Carlow's first ... etc", he is from Tullow.

He's from Coolkenno iirc, which is mainly in Wicklow.

JustinDee

wixfjord wrote: »

He's from Coolkenno iirc, which is mainly in Wicklow.

He's from Tullow. Ardristan, in fact.

almighty1

GerM wrote: »

That day, O’Brien was an innocent bystander when a row broke out, only to be drawn centre-stage by Dan Scarborough, the former England wing. Perhaps keen to impress his forwards, Scarborough hurtled towards the 21-year-old, grabbed him by the throat and advised him, with great originality, to “get off back to Ireland, Paddy, and eat some spuds.”

Damn I wish that was on youtube.

durkadurka

almighty1 wrote: »

Damn I wish that was on youtube.

They wonder why we love beating them so much.... Calls to mind Martin Johnsons comment about Geordan Murphy and getting your drive tarmacced.

JustinDee

For flips sake, Irish rugby fans can be so thin-skinned.

jolley123

JustinDee wrote: »

For flips sake, Irish rugby fans can be so thin-skinned.

I thought it was funny, "I'll show you spuds":D

RMD

JustinDee wrote: »

For flips sake, Irish rugby fans can be so thin-skinned.

Ah now it's pretty funny. I'd like to know what was going through Scarborough's head in between the "I'll show you spuds" and the right hook, probably a confusing moment until he got hit. :pac:

lemansky

Fresh rumours over on a certain babbling brook, that the ink is drying on Sexton's contract. Fingers crossed.

trackguy

lemansky wrote: »

Fresh rumours over on a certain babbling brook, that the ink is drying on Sexton's contract. Fingers crossed.

Would be a good move for the IRFU to have it sorted before the 6N. One bad performance from Sexton could be spun to look very bad on them if he had no contract, given his voiced frustration.

danthefan

JustinDee wrote: »

He's from Tullow. Ardristan, in fact.

In his book he said he saw himself as a Wicklow man, played GAA in Wicklow, etc.