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

Very talented player. Lazy and not a team player. Look at ringrose charging down a kick with the game won. Porter last ditch tackle before half time. I know which players I'd prefer on my team.

Racing are all about winning the lineout and pulling fancy back moves and the majority of that comes through Iribaren/Le Garrec and Russell.

That's fair enough, but with Russell at OH, you get your fancy backline moves but there's a massive trade off in terms of the basics of OH play.

Leinster literally scored a try from a set piece backs play from about the half way line mate or were you even watching the game, Leinster can score in tight, can kick cross field and score and score off set piece I think youre looking for a team from a different planet doing front flips over players to be happy.

Yeah, but it doesn't have the right pizzazz.

No imagination.

Some nice analysis of Leinster's attack Vs Racing. Leinster essentially used the same attacking shape with 10,12,13 but constantly switched up who was first receiver and the angles of attack. Made it very hard for Racing to lock in on who to actually tackle.

The same move, but with different variations is just as hard to defend as a dozen unique backline plays.

I know it's called out in the video but the fact Ngatai is first receiver in all of those examples shows imo 1) his incredibly rounded skillset, he can do basically everything and 2) how well he's gelled with his teammates and how quickly he's gotten up to speed with the coaching to be able to run all these moves so well. I didn't know much about him bar by reputation before he signed but my opinion of him is going up and up every single week. We're at the point where I'd nearly not be concerned with Henshaw being out, and Henshaw is one of the best 12s in the world.

Fair enough. It shows. Shame for him he never got to fulfill his potential international career.

What podcasts to people listen to for balanced coverage of the Irish provinces? I quite like OTB, but it's very munster-centric. For example, this weekend so far has seen a 25 minute episode from Thomond last night which was all Munster. Then this morning, Quinlan spent 11 mins talking about Munster, 5 talking about Ulster (where he only really made one point about the travel arrangements), 6 talking about Leinster and 0 for Connacht.

So across the 50 mins of post mortem for the weekend, the split was 36/5/6/0. This on top of the fact Munster have their very own podcast (The Reds or whatever its called).

I think they're just lads doing it from their kitchen, there's no ads on it, I presume they all have day jobs, I get that it is irregular but I also understand why.

The Molecast is excellent. Best one out there with 3 lads discussing rugby with none of the usual cliches trotted out by ex players and pundits ( ‘look, ah sure know, he’s got X factor’). They know about rugby but I also feel they mention the psychological aspects that teams face. I thought the episode they did on Eddie Jones and England a few weeks ago before he got the chop was superb.

The 42’s would be my second choice as they go into good depth and Murray Kinsella is always worth listening to. Second Captains tends to be entertaining but not all that in depth. You know what you’ll get from each OTB pundit at this stage. Don’t come away from listening to their episodes feeling I’ve learnt anything in particular.

Big Mike put in a good shift. He's not getting the plaudits but, he's been very good. I hope we can keep him.

Molony is a fantastic line out operator. He's really stepped up over the last few years.

It was nice to see RB guide the team to a good victory. He is a very good player. Probably not going to be an Ireland regular but, very competent.

I thought our discipline was very good. We put them under extreme pressure due to their indiscipline.