Leinster Appreciation Thread

justsomebloke

BoardsMember wrote: »

Nice stats but proves nothing, certainly not the point you were trying to prove regarding Leinster.

The English gripe is that Leinster dont have to put out their strongest players week in week out in order to compete in the Celtic league. The result being their best players are well rested and conditioned for all the big matches. And that is true. The fact that they finished top of the table only serves to show that the Celtic league is weak enough to allow them to do this while still winning it.

how is the Celtic league weak if it provided 5 of the 8 Quarter Finalists this year. Also every team has to do squad rotation in nearly every league in every sport. The English clubs would be doing the same.

Surely if the Celtic league was weak enough then are teams wouldn't be getting enough experience against top opposition sides to compete at HEC levels?

Yes the English clubs have to cut their cloth against their measure but the French don't. So why should we worry about the English clubs when we also have to worry about the french.

ambid

Tox56 wrote: »

Rabo qualification or not would have no impact on Leinster winning the HEC whatsoever, they were comfortably first this year.

I think the argument is that if Rabo positions determined HEC qualification, then Irish teams would have harder league matches. Harder league matches would in turn make it harder to rest/ rotate the squad, so the Rabo might then tax Irish teams to the same extent as the Premiership/ Top 14 impacts on English and French teams.

So, for example, a few weeks Leinster sent a largely shadow team to Newport and beat the Dragons. If Dragons qualification for the Heineken was dependent on their League finish, then they might try harder than they did, might give Leinster a harder match, and therefore force Leinster to play more first choice players. The cumulative effect of this would tax Leinster more that all the "dead rubbers" they currently play against sides who have little to play for.

The argument essentially is that Irish players have an unfair advantage as they can peak for set brief periods in the season and rest for others, while the English and French have the much more difficult challenge to maintain high performance levels throughout the entire season as their leagues are harder.

I find the argument unconvincing, but that's my understanding of it. I think the English and French are just looking for external factors to explain their relative under-performance.

justsomebloke

BoardsMember wrote: »

Nice stats but proves nothing, certainly not the point you were trying to prove regarding Leinster.

Sorry forgot to reply to this part.

The stats where to show that over the last while the a good chuck of finalist are teams that finish 3rd or below in their respective leagues so most teams aren't actually competing on multiple fronts

CatFromHue

yimrsg wrote: »

I read a piece about how only 4 of the aviva teams were making a profit from the latest figures, up to June 2011. Saracens posted a loss of £5.6 million and spent 72.9% of their total turnover of £7.6 million on staff wages.

http://www.espnscrum.com/premiership-2011-12/rugby/story/164350.html

I read that too and it's scary reading!

The losses were between 1.1m and 5.6m with seven teams losing between 1.1m and 3.1m while the profits were between 0.6m and 0.9m.

irishbucsfan

Leicester absolutely do not have to put out their best players week in week out. Very few of the premiership teams do. It's such a weak argument.

Leinster have the IRFU to thank for a lot of their success but its just as tough for them as it is for a team like Leicester.

BoardsMember

justsomebloke wrote: »

Sorry forgot to reply to this part.

The stats where to show that over the last while the a good chuck of finalist are teams that finish 3rd or below in their respective leagues so most teams aren't actually competing on multiple fronts

But the leagues are all so different. One has salary caps, two have relegation, one has astronomical investment and so bigger squads etc etc. You cant compare like with like, they are just completely different leagues.

Bits_n_Bobs

Unfairness is a fact in sport, someone generally has a better physique, better co-ordination, better nutrition, better coaching...and guess what? They win. Unfair

I think the English moans about unfairness re. Irish teams are probably true, but....every professsional team sport tends to be unfair; due to an imbalance of financial muscle.

In the H Cup one unfairness is due to Rabo league structure. Arguably another unfairness is that the English have a huge player base, as do the French. Or that the French have a few wealthy owners who can subsidise team spending. Unfairness, it's just not cricket

CatFromHue

irishbucsfan wrote: »

Leicester absolutely do not have to put out their best players week in week out. Very few of the premiership teams do. It's such a weak argument.

I'm not so sure.

A while back when faced with trying to derive some equations for college I started looking at the team sheets for the 11 weeks that covered the first HEC game and the fifth. In particular I was looking at the amount of changes to the starting 15.

I picked Munsters group as it had Northampton and Lanelli i.e. a top Irish team, a top Welsh team, and a top English team all who had something to play for going into the last weekend of the HEC (Amlin qualification in Lanelli and Northampton's case). Castres were in the group too but I didn't bother with them as they were off the pace in the group and so it's hard to quantify how interested they actually were.

For the first domestic game after the second HEC game the amount of changes to the starting were:
Munster 13
Lanelli 8
Northampton 2

The amount of changes to the starting 15 for the third HEC game from the previous domestic game were:
Munster 12
Lanelli 12
Northampton 5

Between the fourth and fifth HEC game was the Christmas period were the Rabo teams had 3 games whereas Northampton had 2 so it's not a valid comparison.

The average number of changes to the starting 15 for all the games from the first HEC game to the fifth were:
Munster 7.4
Lanelli 7.1
Northampton 4 (played one less game in this period)

Whether the amount of changes to the starting 15 for Northampton is representative of the top English teams I don't know. I'd be fairly confident though that Munster's is for the Irish teams and that Lanelli's is approximate for the Welsh teams.

What does this all mean? In my opinion it means that the HEC is much more important for Rabo teams than the Rabo is. Whereas the English teams value their domestic league more than we do.

bamboozle

stats, league tables etc aside, if Irish provinces continue to dominate then can we expect french and english teams to pay attention to the HC? if they lose interest the HC will suffer bigtime.

on that basis/fear i feel the rabo will have to cede something to keep the F/E happy & interested in the HC.

one other thing i always find interesting in football is that the big clubs Man U, Man City, Chelsea, Celtic, Arsenal playing in the Champ's league seem to be more likely to drop league points in the weekend following midweek european games.

Tox56

If Leinster were to play almost any team in the Premiership with 2/3 weeks rest and preperation for both teams, it's very likely Leinster would win.

Their league doesn't help, but the teams competing in it aren't up to standard at the moment.

buck65

Well done Leinster on a great achievement.

mikedragon32

This thread appears to have turned into a "justify the quality of the Rabo teams in Europe" thread. Hardly an appreciation of the achievement of Leinster.

molloyjh

This notion of the English league being more competitive seems a little inaccurate to me. I mean look at the quality of the sides outside the play offs. You have Exeter, Sale, LI, Bath, Gloucester, Worcester, a failing Wasps and Newcastle. A couple of decent sides in there, but none great at the moment. How would they stack up to the likes of Scarlets, Ulster, Cardiff etc. There really isn't that much of a difference in standards there.

None of the top 4 in the Aviva Premiership are in a position to have to worry too much about relegation so that's not a factor. And if you compare the top 4 sides in both leagues you have Quinns, Tigers, Sarries and Saints vs Leinster, Ospreys, Munster and Glasgow. Again not a huge gulf in class either. 3 of these Pro12 sides have won the league in the last 4 years and have been there or there-abouts every year. To say they aren't bothered isn't true.

As for other teams like the Dragons not bothering, that too is daft. For starters they have league position to play for. To think they aren't arsed with that is strange. No one wants to be at the bottom. Secondly the places for the HEC are already decided by position in the Pro12, i.e. the top 3 Welsh sides go through. By improving their league position they could qualify for the HEC. In fact if you look at it only the Scottish and Italian teams don't have to worry about their Pro12 place.

In fact if the Dragons and Connacht were to continue to improve it would be easier for Pro12 clubs to miss out in the current set-up in theory. If Irish provinces all finished in the top 6 for example the Irish team placed lowest would not qualify. This could possibly affect Connacht in a few seasons. Another year of HEC and development may see them push on from 8th this year. But to qualify for the HEC by themselves they'll need to go well beyond that.

A lot of the moaning doesn't stand up to real scrutiny. English teams don't have the depth, but it's up to them to sort that. They are also playing poor rugby for the most part, which should be of far greater concern.

.ak

One thing is for sure... The Quins Leicester game better be the best game in the universe, given that they haven't been competing on different fronts for some months now nor having to worry about relegation. Otherwise all this moaning from their camps will go out the window in my opinion.


Back on topic - sorry to double post it (from the LR thread), but I figure I should post this here as well.

funky penguin wrote: »

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/sport/2012/0519/1224316357450.html

Nice interview with Nacewa. Of note are his comments on wanting to spend the rest of his playing career at Leinster, and Cheika's influence on the current Leinster mindset.

Actually, it was interesting reading that article on the way over, I particular paid note to the banter between himself and Afoa over the schools cup that he (Isa) lost to against Afoa's team.

After the match I noticed John and Isa running over to each other like long lost brothers and hugging it out. Laurel and Hardy moment! I guess the weird thing about it is you could never imagine that when you were a kid playing rugby with your mates that you'd end up thousands of miles away, once again playing for other teams, infront of 80,000 mad Irishmen...

funky penguin wrote: »

Possibly the best paragraph I've read on rugby this year:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/sport/2012/0521/1224316453689.html

Great article actually. I know Thorn is well spoken infront of the camera/microphone, but there has to be a hint of truth in this statement:

Brad Thorn wrote:

“So you need to care about your mates, then there’s work ethic, discipline, sacrifice, humility, being smart, passionate – all those things.

“It’s easy to say those words, but you’ve got to live those words. Leinster live those words, and so did the Broncos, the Crusaders and the All Blacks when I was with them. They were different sides, different styles of teams but all those things shone through.”

It's interesting because for me, watching Leinster climb up the ladder in 09, the thing about it that always struck me was how the players seemed to act differently (infront of the media atleast). You got an air of 'work ethic' and 'professionalism' about them, not getting caught up in the moment and going out to do a job. It was such a far cry away from what we'd been used to from Irish Rugby, when we went out to play teams of equal or higher calibre that we should 'proud of the fight' and if we won the game it was like winning the WC, and then go onto lose a GS/championship.

I'm not talking about all those years ago either, I'm talking as recently as last season or the season before. A team that separates emotion from the game, or I should say; a team that uses their emotion prudently, is usually a winning team. It is something that stuck with me, I can't remember when, I think it was after winning to Clermont in '10, the players were seriously disappointed in themselves. Heaslip spoke openly about the work ethos in the camp and that they were unhappy with their performance. If that was the Irish team they'd be saying 'Well a win is a win and we'll take that.' It said everything to me; I knew they would go on and lose to Toulouse, I was sure of it. But I was also sure a team with that mentality would go onto to do great things. The only other team I've ever noticed that had the same public attitude was the ABs.

Levels apart, but the fundamentals are the same. Keeping a team on that kind of plateau must be so hard. Schmidt, Jono and the player-leaders have done a great job; it's all about instilling a culture, and perhaps the players/coaches of the future will carry that torch. One thing is for sure, I'll certainly enjoy it whilst we still have it.