Leinster vs Connacht Jan 1st 2023 7.35 RTE2

Ngatai pulled up after making that pass to Baird. Really hope he isn't injured like Sexton. We need as many top quality players in the middle of the park as possible.

Decent hit out. First half was extremely sloppy and it's concerning how many of our own lineouts were lost.

Second half was better. Tightened up for the first 25 minutes and killed the game before opening up and scoring some lovely trys.

Larmour, Baird and Doris were the standouts.

Soroka made a decent physical impact off the bench. I was hopeful that this season would be his breakthrough one. Been injured until this week, but hopefully he'll have some opportunities in the coming months to lay down a marker.

He has that extra grunt which Leinster are trying to implement into their game.

Sexton has taken no interviews. It was clear from the post match mingling that he was finding difficult to talk normally. Its pretty clear thats a serious bit of damage of some sort and I think we can count him out of the January European games and probably at least the first two rounds of the 6N.

Could he also face a citing fir the upright head to head tackle?

It's possible, but unlikely. It would have to be at a red card level and the level of force Sexton adds to the tackle probably wouldn't warrant that, though little other mitigation exists.

About as clear as it gets. Summed up how bad Carty was all evening

Think Sexton was pretty passive but he's completely upright so a yellow wouldn't have been outrageous.

Otherwise it was a weird game, always felt like the floodgates were about to open but Connacht hung in there, ably assisted by the omnishambles of the Leinster lineout.

Gutted for Hawkshaw, he was doing really well but that's a season ender I'd say. The new Murray looks very decent too. Carty was atrocious god help him, everything he touched turned to sh1t.

For Leinster, Ngatai continues to look a fantastic signing and Larmour was just outstanding again. Think he has to be ahead of JOB now.

JoBs left boot is very useful too.

Think sextons tackle was defo worth a TMO review and probably would have been yellow (but who knows?!)

Lowe and Osbourne are also left footed.

It's nice to have a left footed kicking option in a backing but with Lowe we already have one.

Once you have a left footed kicking option on the field the second one isn't that special.

I do suspect that it's something Leo pays attention to when stitching together mixed 1st choice/2nd choice backlines.

JOB is a good kicker. Lowe and Keenan are better kickers in the back 3 imo.