Leinster Team Talk Thread (Love you Furlong time)

Having the co-captains allowed the referee to stop talking to Ryan completely. Ryan was far closer to the incidents Leinster wanted highlighted.

Re-watched the game last night. Regarding the dealings with the referee, Carley clearly wanted to set out his stall for the day and was determined to take no backchat or input from players. Ryan was consistently approaching him in the first 15 minutes on completely legitimate items but needed to know it was going nowhere. Make the point, walk away. He was absolutely right to question the HB incident but needed to drop it. Ringrose isn't nearly as confrontational and would just ask for a message from the referee as opposed to offering his own input.

Bourgarit was in similar hot water and was warned twice by the referee. He couldn't move on from Bourgarit but they brought TKB over as a translator and mediator at one point to warn the team. Separately, I think Bourgarit is a great player but he was pathetic. He played poorly, threw badly (was blessed to get away with some extremely crooked throws) but his conduct on the field was atrocious. He was throwing his hands in the air, turning his back to the rucks to remonstrate with officials and gave his team no leadership.

On second watch, Baird was absolutely brilliant. He was good on first watch but his involvements were excellent. I don't think he put a foot wrong and made multiple big plays. As good as Dulin was, I'd have given MOTM to Baird overall. Ryan wasn't too far behind in his work around the field along with a couple of big plays, forcing a knock on at a maul, holding up Botia on the line and, fortuitously, taking the arm of the jumper to force a spill.

The bench made a big impact. VDF made some errors but also came up with two big turnovers. Jenkins only got 5 minutes but made his presence felt in that time with a couple of big counter rucks and stopping Skelton dead behind the gain line. Kelleher was really good. I don't think he had to throw in which possibly suited him but he brought a lot of physicality and energy from the bench. Ngatai continues to make at least one huge impact play whenever he plays. He had no right to make that break through LAR deep into their 22. Frawley had a very good 40 minutes too. He used the wind well for the most part with some massive kicks. It probably hindered some of his kicks too as they drifted too far to Dulin but he was generally very good.

They also kicked on at least 3 times directly aimed at JGP in the back field away from Keenan.

JgP messes up a couple of these.. similar to the final last year. Jgp has had a poor few months.

ROG in his press interview praised Gibson Park for controlling the game in the conditions. Some people don't appreciate just how good he is. Andy Farrell does, Leo does and Im certainly do. When he's not playing our whole game slows down, his defence and positioning are very good.

Whilst I don't think JGP had a good game, I do think context is needed. He touched the ball more than anyone on the field by a distance. He was served up some shite ball at times (in the opening 20, we couldn't give him a clean line out). He passed the ball 55 times.....Frawley and Byrne passed it 10 times between them. He was also positioned in the backfield to receive kicks probably as much as anyone if not more.

With those conditions, he was always going to make a few handling errors but he still did manage to have some decent moments, taking one great high ball (drawing a penalty for being taken in the air) and his kicking was pretty much the same as all the others on the field.

Given the fact that he was playing 9 and potentially covered more ground than anyone on the field by having to play 80, I think he was fine.