Leinster Team Talk Thread (Love you Furlong time)

Big Joe has improved massively since his time in the WC camp. His ceiling is huge. Baird at 6 may be like Beirne with the afterburners on

Milne is a much better than decent prospect imo but he picks up a lot of knocks. That is the thing that would worry me.

Keeping McCarthy and Boyle has to be priority one for leinster. They are both potentially elite.

I hope that game knocks on the head the folly of playing two tight head locks in tandem. The lineout (from which Leinster traditionally launch most of their strike plays) was omni shambles in that 1st half.

My god Pollard had a shocker of a cameo today - he was awful - couldn't do a single thing right. But the Tigers now have to go fully loaded versus Les Blues as previous posters said as they could mathematically end up 4th in the group.

Well I suppose that if they are surplus to requirements at Leinster they could always just give up rugby rather than move to Munster......FFS .......

What does it matter where a player originates? It's where they end up and to what level they reach. Sometime this place if like an effing kindergarten. How many times do we have to read... 'Wah wah...look at all our not so good players going elsewhere. Isn't it shocking that they can't produce their own. Much better that those players go on the dole...Eh!" Grow the feck up is my advice. It's not the School's Cup...it's a professional business.

A top 2 spot really needs to be the aim here and I'm sure Cullen is fully aware of the permutations.

Right now, that is out of our hands as we are the lowest ranked of the pool leaders. However, some tough final fixtures could see that change. Toulouse are more than likely going to top proceedings on 19/20 points as they host Bath (also on 15 so one of them will be on 19). Bordeaux are currently on 15. A win in Pretoria gives them 19 with a healthy PD which makes them uncatchable for us, in reality. Hopefully the Bulls do us a favour and get a win but them resting their 4 current Bok players isn't helping. A lot will depend on what team Bordeaux send down there. They've a 7 day turnaround to play Stade Francais at home so may wish to focus on that. If they lost though, Lyon could pip them to top spot still.

I'll work on the basis that Northampton don't get a win in Thomond. They've played above themselves but they also owe their position to being in a fairly weak pool; I don't see them troubling the latter stages of the tournament.

Top two spot means home games all the way to the final, if Leinster are able to get there. I wouldn't fancy Leinster to win right now if they had to go away to Toulouse or Bordeaux.

Have to beat Leicester first and foremost. Their attack is very poor but, for the first 30 minutes anyway, they were actually going fairly well particularly up front. I'd imagine they'll be looking for a response next week particularly in front of their own support. See the likes of Ulster earlier this season against Racing after being thumped. Leicester are good at home....have now beaten Saracens, Bath and the Stormers in their last games. Leinster should still have too much for them though particularly if their launch plays go so well again (and we saw that Leicester are vulnerable to those in Dublin last season).