Leinster Team Talk Thread (Love you Furlong time)

We did have that advantage. But also, all of the games we won in the last 3 months were away from home.

I think that's a record

Playing the same XV for five knockouts in five weeks, when none of your opponents have to do so, would get the best results. I'm going to call bullsh1t on that.

Saying they turned to jelly is absolutely bang out of order.

I can't get my mind around it!

It was a confidence issue. People tightened up all over the shop.

To my mind, two factors influence winning, confidence and momentum.

By selecting a weakened side against Munster we conceded momentum and by losing, in turn lost confidence in the squad.

It's not two squads, it's not the Ireland level players and the URC players, it's not the Champions Cup level XXIII versus the rest. It's one squad of 55 and winning affects them all and losing affects them all.

In my opinion, you play to win the next match, particularly at the business end of the season. We should've played our best available XV against Munster and beaten them.

And then we should have taken that momentum and played our best available XV against La Rochelle and died with our boots on. I feel the outcome may have been different.

I simply don't accept that our prime players cannot play three or four weeks in a row in April and May, injuries aside. And when injuries do occur, you have able replacements absolutely chomping at the bit.

The loss of momentum and of confidence was a choice and it's on our coaching team. I could forgive a dice roll once, but we just made the same mistake twice in two years and that's not easy to forgive. It was an insult to our players frankly.

PS, if Sexton did remonstrate with Jaco Peyper after the final last week and roar at him that he was an effing disgrace etc, as is being reported in the papers, then he should get a ban and he is massively fortunate if he does not.

Whatever the reason for the defeats it still stinks the same as last year and the year was a resounding failure. There's got to be a fault in the coaching strategy. Leo giving Nick McCarthy the bench against Munster is a terrible idea. There is to me, an overconfident aspect to the side. Stupid me! I thought it was the right thing to do. As someone mentioned, momentum was lost.

Regardless of the amount we lost by against La Rochelle, we didn't deserve to win. Had we won, it would have been farcical as we weren't at the races for the second half. We deserved to lose, imo. Having watched it back several times, I'm astounded by how we were so poor in clearing our zone and the lack of aggression at defensive line outs.

It will be a long summer. There's got to be some shift in strategy. Nothing major is needed but fielding sub par teams in semi finals is not the way to go.

There's a stat in today's ST that in eight EPCR games, or 640 minutes, Leinster were behind for a grand total of 22 minutes.

We topped the league table at a canter and could have won the trophy if we'd really focused on it.

We were bulk suppliers to a GS winning team.

And we did it all without our captain and best player.

I find it very hard to square all this with phrases like "resounding failure".

Empty handed is a resounding failure. Means nothing to dominate up to when you have to win.

Why does everything have to be one extreme or the other?

Can it not be a very good season with a disappointing finish?

Can we not acknowledge the shortcomings and errors in the last two games without setting fire to the previous 25?

A few years without trophies might be exactly what a few people need to get a bit of perspective back.

And none of the Leinster players accepted having their runners up medals put around their neck. Which shows you what they thought of things