Leinster Team Talk Thread (Love you Furlong time)

To highlight these. A number of people owe Ala'alatoa an apology on here.

When has a tighthead gone the full 80?

Much less gone the full 80 in conditions like that against the European Champions away who have a typically destructive scrum at times.

He creaked here and there which is quite frankly par the course away in France to their top teams.

We signed Big Mike as a player to *get the job done* when Furlong is unavailable.

I can think of no better performance than going the distance for the 80 like that is doing exactly that.

Let it be noted that he had 8 decent carries too. More than any other Leinster forward except for Doris

Exactly how are you not wrong?

Performing for the full 80 against the back to back champions puts it down as one of the better performances from one of our NIQs.

This is the man who Marty Moore would be an upgrade to?

The Leinster performance against La Rochelle was important in a number of ways.

1: We don't need to play La Rochelle's game in order to beat them.

2: Leinster are probably more potent without Sexton as the game doesn't need to run through the 10 all the time and is a bit more free flowing.

3: Leinster are really going to need to spend well on a Tighthead prop once Ala'alatoa goes, If Furlong is going to have issues it is of the highest priority to bring in an additional TH to lighten the load. Playing Ala'alatoa the full game shows that they didn't have much confidence in what was on the bench. At best the remaining TH depth behind Furlong and Ala'alatoa seems to be URC level only (at the moment).

4: Ryan Baird looks like Leinster and Irelands 6 moving forward.

5: With Baird seemingly looking the part at flanker, it wouldn't hurt to get another quality lock in.

I also think Carley managed the engagement with the captains all wrong. The time that he snapped with Ryan, Ryan was calmly talking to him about Botia pushing Connors into Byrnes line when Byrne was jumping for a high ball. It was incredibly dangerous from Botia and Ryan was right to call it out.

We saw from LAR as well that Carley was being difficult. Bourgarit got really wound up trying to talk to the guy.

Maybe Ryan could have handled it better, but Carley absolutely could have too.

I don't know about that as in the first few minutes there seemed to be lots of people from both teams shouting at the ref for every little perceived infringement, so I understand why he might have become annoyed. It was verging on the behaviour of players in a Premier League football match for a while, so I don't really blame him for wanting to take some dramatic action to exert control, and I think player behaviour was one of the reasons it was a tough game to referee.

That isn't the case though. They flag before the game which of the two of them is going to be communicating with the ref, like they don't both go to the coin toss (ensuring to make plenty of eye contact). It was mentioned a few times in the media since the announcements.

Overall, Ryan was damned if he did or damned if he didn't in the first half. There were so many incidents where you want your captain in the ref's ear - from the at times reckless physicality of LAR that at best walked the line, to the consistent LAR infringement on their line, to a very questionable yellow for a Leinster player, to the scrums being a complete lottery. If Ryan hadn't been in discussions with the ref many would have been questioning his competence.