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

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I forgot how miserable boards.ie can be after a defeat. Dear God.

Leinster have been the best team in Europe for almost all of this season, with an almost entirely homegrown team. They had an off day in 30 degree heat away from home against an excellent rival, and still came within a minute of winning the most competitive club tournament in European rugby. The match was a toss up, and would be if the two teams met again.

Time for a little perspective everybody.

I'm going to log off for a couple of weeks until a little sanity returns to this thread.

Maybe that's an exception that proves the rule. Or maybe Toulouse are just a touch off the level they were at last season. Their away record would back up the latter argument.

If you look at it, the stats are quite stark - and I know it's unfair on Lancaster to exclude his league title wins when he's done better there than any other Leinster coach.

SL: 1 trophy from 11 major competitions coached

MJ: 1 from 4

JS: 5 from 11

EJ: 3 from 8

Or maybe La Rochelle are the exception that proves the rule?

SOB confirmed as new contact skills coach for next season. Not sure how I feel about this. I know he has a bit of coaching experience, but that's at a far lower level.

There are plenty of instances from last weekends game where Leinster made it beyond the gainline, generated quick ruck ball, made a line break and then messed it up with handling errors. This was a final against a very good La Rochelle side. We weren't going to have the same gainline dominance as in previous rounds. But Leinster had more than enough of that to actually win the game. Unenforced errors in attack and also failures in clearing their lines led to that defeat.

La Rochelles biggest in game victory was monopolising possession. They recognised that Leinster, for all their quality, lacks a top class poacher at the ruck. They could flood the breakdown with very big men and stop us from really threatening their ball.

One positive is that I don't think any other side in the URC can play the way La Rochelle did. The Stormers have comparable size, but play a very transition oriented attacking game. Don't think they'll keep possession as well as La R.

Besides them, maybe the Sharks could threaten, but they play less than the sum of their very impressive parts. The return of Lukhanyo Am could make a difference though. He's brilliant.

Continuing on from the above, even though Leinster lost there are still positives to take away from the game. Namely at the ruck and scrum.

In terms of ruck work on our own ball I'm not sure we've ever played better. La Rochelle are one of the best sides in the world at targeting the breakdown, but a we did a good job at securing our own ball and clearing them out fast. We vastly improved on our performance at that area when compared to last seasons semi final. We still conceded some turnover penalties at the breakdown, but that's to be expected against a side as good La Rochelle. Over the last few seasons, Leinster have sometimes been sloppy at securing their own ball. It was encouraging seeing us so laser focused at that area.

The scrum was a positive in that we identified how much pressure La Rochelle were sure to exert on our own put in. So we put the ball in at the second rows feet, kicked back to 8 and had JGP passing all in the space of a second. It was a very impressive bit of work and something that had clearly been worked on in training.

They're two big improvements to our game and things I hope we continue in with into the playoffs.

I'm not sure why you are mentioning population size in a discussion about coaching.

Hmmmm!