Leinster Team Talk/Gossip/Rumours Thread XII (The Byrne Supremacy)

Clegg

Ronan Kelleher is a ridiculous player.

Sangre

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118305992#Comment_118305992

He is basically his brother plus 20kg...

pickarooney

What is this crapheap of a scrum? Every single one in this half has been won by Bath.

Clegg

Leinster haven't been great at the restarts.

Sangre

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118306060#Comment_118306060

Healy struggling in his new tighthead role it seems. Although Bath don't seem to be driving the straightest...

Clegg

Ringrose and Ross Byrne subbed off.

Looks like Frawley has gone to 10 with TOB and JOB on at centre.

pickarooney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118306071#Comment_118306071

He's at LH with Ala'alatoa at TH

crisco10

I think there's only been 1 completed scrum this game.

Edit. Make that 2

scott1974

Bath on top now..

Clegg

Strange game. Leinster never had to get out of second gear to put a bonus point on Bath. We won the majority of collisions and generally had Bath moving backwards. But at the same time I think we were quite poor. Tried playing at 100mph too often and made a lot of simple errors.

We never really put Bath under much sustained pressure or built many phases. It was usually a line bust and try. We dropped our level significantly in the second half as the game was well over.

Genuinely don't know how we're sorted for next week. That game was very comfortable and posed no test for Leinster.

UAEguy2020

Christ this ref has absolutely murdered this game and killed any chance of a free flowing game… and ofcourse he rewards Bath for being **** by giving them every 50/50 this 2nd half.

crisco10

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118306197#Comment_118306197

Not sure about the being favourable to Bath bit (am in stadium). But it certainly has been a shite second half all round.

UAEguy2020

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118306207#Comment_118306207

He has been, it’s noticeable especially in the scrum that he’s being very soft on Bath which he wasn’t doing in the first 30.

Clegg

Luke McGrath and Ross Byrne were both very poor today. Neither have played well at all this season.

UAEguy2020

It was like Leinster thought it would be a walk in the park and decided to give it the full whack, in the end it just got very sloppy. I’d imagine Leinster will be different next week.

Sangre

Leinster as a team will be pretty disappointed with that performance. The quality of individual players was enough to see them through but lots of sloppy play on show.

molloyjh

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118306207#Comment_118306207

He def was very sympathetic for large parts.

ersatz

Porter, Tadgh and Kelleher are so good on the ball, even in a so so performance. What a front row that is. JGP had a decent game, Ringrose too, though he made a couple of mistakes. Frawley was MIA until he moved to 10, thought he did well enough for his 20 minutes there during a period when Bath were half decent. Lowe had one to forget, he dropped 4 or 5 balls. But hard to judge anything given that Bath really were terrible.

pickarooney

That Leinster front row (both the starters and finishers) should be wrecking that bath scrum but they were giving away penalties left, right and centre. It's all very well being good around the pitch but the bread and butter stuff is worrying

sydthebeat

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118306837#Comment_118306837

There was a lot of "lucky dip" reffing going on at scrum time.

UAEguy2020

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118306913#Comment_118306913

Alot of that lucky dip reffing was out of pure sympathy for Bath.

Nigzcurran

Just back from the game, thanks for all the tips and advice. We had a great day out, right behind the Leinster goal for the first half so missed most of the try’s but got to see plenty of action close up. Already planning for the next one!

stephen_n

I think despite the result, today was a bad performance for Leinster. Error strewn again. Against incredibly poor opposition, it’s hard to quantify how poor that Bath team were but the scoreline flattered them. There will be much tougher challenges to come and nothing about how Leinster are playing suggests they are capeable of facing them. Some great individual performances but as a team. The error count is ridiculous.

crisco10

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118307027#Comment_118307027

I sort of agree.

Bath were poor but they got so many breaks

We'll need better performance in South of France next week.

scott1974

Montpelier mincing Exeter at scrum time, we need to sort our scrum our for next week

Dubinusa

I've been thinking that Leinster haven't been a top flight team for a while. A couple of years perhaps. I suppose not having Sexton is a factor. But last season and the one before, I thought that the team looked better during the international windows. The integration of the returning international players didn't improve the team. On recent performances, we are a bit short of winning Europe.

TRC10

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118307308#Comment_118307308

Completely agree. I haven't understood the media hype we've been getting. There's not a chance in hell we're 2nd favourites.

We're never going to compete at the top end of Europe with Ross Byrne at 10. Sad but true. He's a good player to a certain level but he's way too slow and plays too deep. When compared to other top team's 10s like Ford, Russell and Ntamack the chasm is substantial.

Porter/Kelleher/Furlong, world's best front row my ass. Getting embarrassed by one of the worst teams in the comp.

You'd expect a team with serious ambitions of winning the tournament to put down a marker on day 1. We we're shyte today. I can see us losing in Montpellier next week tbh.

Dubinusa

It's hard to figure out what the problem is. There's rarely a complete performance. Against Munster last year was probably the best in recent memory.

The difference this year is that the international players will play more. They will probably suffer a form drop as a result. It would seem that they are going to be flogged like the Sarries players are. Our biggest strengths were the back up players were just a little off the ability of the international lads. I think the international team will suffer for this, with injury and fatigued players.

The coaching needs to reassess their instruction or how this team with so many international players has looked so underwhelming at times. Something has changed in the sense that we're a lesser side than we were in 2018. I have no idea what that is. It's also worrying, that so many good players are playing in A.I.L or not playing at all. Some players will move on, I think. I didn't know that we were 2nd favorites and I don't think we're even close to being the 2nd best team.

salmocab

Jesus Christ this place is painful. Didn’t play great win by 25 and some think the sky is falling. It wasn’t a great performance but it also was missing a few players especially on the bench. No it wouldn’t have beaten another top side but they are well able to go up a few gears

Former Former Former

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118308160#Comment_118308160

Couldn't agree more. It was the same last week, if we're not utterly dominant for the full 80 minutes, lads are falling over themselves to be the first to predict our demise.

If we had needed to win by 60 points yesterday, we would have.

Now we're clutching our pearls that the FRONT ROW isn't good enough? FFS.