Leinster Team Talk Thread (Love you Furlong time)

Also, the Ireland RWC gear is all launching this week and Elvery's have the exclusive rights for that, so assuming the rumours about them getting Leinster are true, they won't want to crowd their own market. I'd say it will be a few weeks yet before we see anything new from Leinster.

Would be great to play La Rochelle in the pool stages. I honestly think mentally our players had a fear of Skelton up until last year's final where we finally shut him down for once. The year before in France we kind of had everything go against us. I think for us to improve we need to work on making breaks in open play from our backs, currently there's no running threat from open play and mostly it's planned set pieces that we slice defence open with. Only Keenan and Lowe ever really get through the first line. Think Osborne is a player who could really make a big impact next year in this regard.

I'm very surprised at the ages of their key players and how old their team is. I was convinced Danty was 24/25, the same with Kerr-Barlow but both are in their 30s. Will be interesting to see if age affects them in the next year/two as bar Aldritt their key players are all currently 30/31/32.

Leinster have a hang up about La Rochelle. La Rochelle are fantastic but on almost the same level as Toulouse, who Leinster have no problem beating.

Leinster getting La Rochelle away in the group stages and winning would go a massive way to helping them long term.

Toulouse do seem to have a hoodoo when it comes to Leinster imo. They seem to choose game plans that play into Leinster's strengths almost and also just implode in games. They do seem to have mistakes and blunders in their core character as well that doesn’t help. You give leinster platforms (especially lineouts) and they can obliterate you off set plays. Toulouse are also not a possession team generally the way la rochelle are so they can’t default to a keep ball game.

I’d say this is a problem for france too as the national team is way more Toulouse in character and style than la rochelle.

You disagree with what i said? Which part?

From memory leinster scored a ton from lineouts and toulouses performance was certainly pretty loose when it came to discipline… ie blunders. Do i need to go back and watch that game?

Edit: i watched all the tries. My bad, I’d lean heavily into straight up implosion from toulouse for a lot of that. I forgot how many boneheaded things they did in that games.

I’d still stand by that you don’t generally want to give leinster lineouts.

I wouldn’t want to give leinster lineouts at all if possible. If i had the conditioning, i’d pretty much always want to keep it in play.

My preference would be to either run everything back or kick it back long but not out.

To do that you really need to be able to get the ball and keep it for a while because playing straight up kick tennis with leinster is a losing strategy usually.