Leinster Team Talk Thread (Love you Furlong time)

Writing off Healy is premature.

Milne showed in SA and against Munster he has a bit to go. Boyle has had one game off the bench! miles off being ready!

If we start Healy and Porter on the bench we probably beat Munster in the semi final. Scrum was minced.

I’m not sure it’s lack of vision, I just think his pass from left to right is poor. So he opts to use it less often than he would passing right to left. Though you’d imagine practice would improve it unless it’s a physical issue.

I think there's a strong element of this and I'm surprised it isn't discussed more at this point. It seriously restricts him and also, for a team that does their homework, makes him a lot easier to defend. If you think back to a lot of his tries stepping in, it's usually when the ball is going towards the right wing. I'm not sure if it's a lack of skillset or a hangover from not doing it in years gone by but he absolutely has a bad habit of checking inside when the ball is going from left to right.

Sometimes it works out and he beats the defender (both his tries against Ulster this season in the RDS) but often he's caught and it's a poor call. Moments like the non-pass against Saracens, the final phases against La Rochelle when he checked back in (La Rochelle had him under serious pressure too, in fairness) or, more blatantly, after Ngatai won the turnover, he was at scrum half and had six men outside before spinning back inside and trying to sneak up the middle which led to slow ball that was kicked away.

He's a super player but I find it surprising that a flaw in his game/decision making has been allowed persist for so long.

One post contradicts the other.

I have multiple times dove into Healys involvements this season following your lazy derision showing that he's still capable of top level rugby with important involvements. You on the other hand have literally not once offered founded or substantial evidence to the contrary. All you ever say is "oh Healy is past it" or other synonyms. Back your stuff up or accept that your POV is incorrect.

Not only are you unwilling to do actual research into your point of view..... you're unwilling to research the most basic info that is the most readily available to you.... how old he is. He is 35 and will be 35 at the world cup where he will celebrate is birthday (hopefully with a win over Scotland)

And on the Healy point. So what he's 35? There's no magic light switch after a player turns 30 something that means they can't perform. They perform until the next cab off the rank starts to out perform them. That's how high performance sport works. Sometimes they're leapfrogged at 25 like Dave Kearney and sometimes they're leapfrogged at 37 like Rory best.

Honestly, you think we should jettison our second best loosehead whose still playing international and knock out rugby for a 21 year old with 47 minutes of senior rugby? Do you also think we should can Harry Byrne for Sam Prendergast? Or Rhys Ruddock for James Culhane?

Your lack of understanding about how development works is quite telling tbh. There is plenty of minutes to go around. Especially seeing as Healy will be gone to the world cup so will be missing until November so plenty of game time for Boyle to get.

The actual person you should be worrying about blocking Boyles development is Ed Byrne. In him we have a player who is not really up to top level rugby but is still in and around 3rd choice. He is the person that Boyle should be looking to get minutes over.

Ed Byrne despite missing significant chunks of the season with injury amassed almost as many minutes for Leinster (424) as "over the hill one foot in the grave grandad" Healy (452) and actually had more minutes than him at loosehead when you factor in that approx 200* of Healys Leinster minutes came at TIGHTHEAD.

So again I implore you..... just stop. At this point I think it's fair that you don't know what you're talking about. Not only is Healy one of the better loosehead props in Ireland right now... he's also one of the greatest ever Leinster players who deserves a lot more than the derision of "fans" like you

*I approximated Healys tighthead minutes as officially he wore the 3/18 jersey for 235 minutes but there was some rejigging of front rows at few times where he still scrummaged down at loosehead.