Leinster Team Talk Thread (Love you Furlong time)

While the season ended disappointingly, I think Leinster play great rugby with a nucleus of homegrown players. I'd rather lose with these lads than win with mercenaries.

We were let down by poor management in my opinion. Despite thinking that resting frontliners was the correct decision at the time, I now think it was a mistake.

Onwards to next season. Can't wait for it.

Just musing on Leinster over the last 5 seasons. We've consistently been one of the top two sides in Europe, but have lost 3 finals in that time.

In each tournament we've played brilliant rugby up to that final only to become undone after our opponents picked out a fatal flaw and exploited it. Against Saracens it was their power and a few mistakes from McGrath and Ringrose which did us in. Last season La Rochelle attacked our lineout and robbed us of our set piece attacking platform. Last weekend La Rochelle robbed us of our platform again, but in a different way. They played keep ball, didn't kick for touch and didn't allow us any opportunity to launch set piece attacks.

Going into each final we thought we had our tactics settled and tailored to fight the opposition's strengths. Only for them to have found a hole we didn't anticipate. Then we came under pressure and couldn't adapt. I think that speaks poorly of our coaching set up. They've created a brilliant attacking structure, but failed to account for, or couldn't see, where the problems in the system lay.

Where the system was exploited the players couldn't adapt. That's on playing and coaching staff. We've seen with Ireland that you can adapt even when the tactics have been disrupted or players injured. They didn't lose their cool or start making errors. Closest to that happening was against England, bug they regained their nerve. Sometimes I wonder was there something wrong with the coaching environment or culture at Leinster over the last few seasons.

Things are definitely going to change at Leinster next season. I've seen some analysts and pundits say that if Leinster keep the best bits of Lancaster's reign and marry them with Nienaber's strengths, Leinster will be hard to beat. But I don't see it that way. We're going to see big changes. The biggest will probably be a negative one, at least at the beginning. We probably won't see as many cohesive performances when rotating younger players of second stringers.

Lancaster's best trait as a coach was upskilling his players so that they all knew their roles and how they fit into the side. It's remarkable that Leinster used so many players last season, but you could always see the same attacking structure no matter what side they fielded. We'll probably lose some of that with Lancaster's departure. We'll lose some games and play poorly when we rotate out players. The sky will fall and the world will end etc.

What I hope we'll gain however, is a harder edge in defence. We've generally an excellent defence, but I think the best sides were finally starting to get to grips with it near the.ens of Lancaster's tenure. Toulouse, Munster and La Rochelle all created plenty of line breaks and opportunities to score against us. They usually didn't convert due to excellent Leinster scramble defence. But if you keep putting yourself under pressure, like we did against La Rochelle, we'll eventually crack. I also hope we place more emphasis on how we defend the set piece. Right now we're just looking to survive them. We should be look g ho.attavk and disrupt.

It's not how you start the season, but how you finish it. Leinster have learned that the hard way in recent years. I'll take a lack of cohesion on certain games if it means better performances in the biggest ones.

I'm not sure about what will change and I doubt there's going to be massive tweaks. One thing that I hope to see is a better performance at rucks. A Sean O'Brien would make things easier but, we should commit more bodies.

There's plenty to look forward to. So many lads plated well all season and maybe they'll put pressure on the incumbents. I hope to see Soroka get his chance and hopefully he develops. More of Prendergast and Boyle, if he stays. The international lads have a full schedule with the world cup and the 6nations soon after. There's plenty of scope for secondary players to make a statement.

JN will improve some areas. I just hope the attacking structures remain. I'm hoping that JN can bring in more of an in your face type play. Meaning less kicking the ball away and more carries in the fringes. Kicking is well and good if it works all the time. When it's not effective we end up defending relentlessly. I think post Sexton there will be some degree of slippage in Leinster play. It's how the coaching staff counters this, that's important.

Part of the problem with playing system rugby, where every position has a defined role and players adapt to that role depending on where they are selected, is that it doesn't cope well at the end of the season when you've been executing the same gameplan for a full season or more, the other team just needs to find your weakness and unravel that gameplan

The other problem with system rugby, is that when your gameplan isn't working, the players can't adapt in real time. (Very few rugby teams have a plan b, but selecting different players can allow them to play differently)

When the squad is composed of extremely talented players they can overcome having the gameplan worked out by the brute force of having quality individuals who can create moments of magic.

But in the final stages of knockout rugby, that gap in quality is way smaller and those teams have all of the data they need to neutralise the gameplan.

And then there is the rock paper scissors aspect, where some teams system happen to be a really bad matchup for your system. La Rochelle play KBA. Keep the ball alive. This denies Leinster the set pieces you launch so many of your attacks from.

So La Rochelle playing their own game to the best of their ability nullifies Leinsters strengths.

In the start of last week's game, when building the 17 point lead, Leinsters speed and intensity forced errors from LaR. The errors were tactical, kicking the ball to touch under pressure, crucially, giving Leinster the set pieces they wanted.

After the 20th minute, Leinsters intensity burned itself out and LaR were able to play their gameplan that denies Leinster set pieces, and the broken play in LaRs half of the pitch that Leinster use to score tries

The unable to adapt part is frustrating. It really does boggle the mind that these lads can't try something else when the system crashes the bed.

I just find it hard to think that one strategy is sewn into the team and there's no variation of when things go south.

It's possible. The players have always said how great those Tuesday sessions for maintaining a high skill level. But Goodman appears to be a seriously good coach, so hopefully we see no dip in skills.

Again. It's how you finish the season. Munster were rubbish for large swathes of the season, lost about 10 games compared to Leinster's 3, but come out of it with a trophy.

This season has been monumentally botched.

When were Leinster soft as jelly? They defended brilliantly against La Rochelle. If wasn't that effort which lost them the game.

Munster had the luxury of not having to rotate because they had multiple rest weeks at every turn.

The glee with which some people greet every setback is genuinely dispiriting.

Fans my hole.