Leinster Team Talk/Gossip/Rumours Thread XII (The Byrne Supremacy)

I think the conditions for dominance have to be there but you always also need excellent coaching/management and a special generation of high level talent as well.

Leinster have the foundations but everyone is one bad hire or two, or some mismanagement from 5/10 years later wondering what happened.

Cullen and Lancaster (and other people probably as well) are what made this current leinster dominance imo. They had the resources to do it. They certainly wouldn't have done so in Connacht but they were still essential.

Why as a kid 30+ years ago do you believe you would/should have heard about what Leinster Rugby were doing? Why would you possibly think it makes sense to base your opinion on that? I'm not too far off the same vintage as you and had friends who went through the Leinster Rugby underage system, right through playing for the senior team. I wouldn't have had a clue the interactions Leinster Rugby had with students over the years if I wasn't hearing from them about all the camps, trips etc they involved in. It would whiff of arrogance that Leinster Rugby or any other provincial/national sporting body should be keeping a child aware of what they were doing and if I didnt know that they must be doing nothing.

Leinster actually have 6 medals over the last decade, topped the domestic league 3 other times they didnt win, and came in runners up in 3 other CC finals. They definitely should have won more but top tier sport is very fine margins. Any other province would bite your hand off for a quarter of that success during a Leinster 'down' period - look at the recent reaction to a domestic league win that Leinster sent out the B team for. It is very clear you're not a Leinster fan, the jealousy and peddling of grievances gives it away.

I'd prefer if it didn't but Irish rugby does revolve around Leinster - basically every metric points to that. Unfortunately, over the years each other province has made some terrible organisational errors, something Leinster thankfully minimised since they made the breakthrough during the Cheika era, and thankfully when they've misstopped they quickly pivoted to a better direction.

Plus Harry Byrne at 15 and Ross Byrne at 13? I'm pretty confident that team would beat Fiji at hurling - or are we back on rugby now? 😁

Grievance is coming into the Leinster thread and taking multiple shots at their team and fanbase and dragging into the thread nonsense that has nothing to do with rugby, like the location of 'the courts, government administration, the law firms, the media companies, the corporate tax haven'. Tinfoil hat stuff.

I never said it was unfair to Leinster - you keep moaning about and trying to knock down this complete strawman.

The point was from my original post and continues to be that central contracts aren't the pure godsend with only positives like some people try to make out, especially when it suits them to moan about some special treatment for Leinster.

My point that there are some drawbacks to players being on central contracts is not the same as saying they are unfair to the province involved. The evidence of the complaints over the last few months from certain elements of the media and other province fanbases around the impact of Irish involvement has on the few players that do have central contracts proves my point for me.

Garry Ringrose due to return against England. I wonder what the plan of action will be?

Do they drop Henshaw who has played well?

Do they move Ringrose to the wing even though Nash has played well?

Do they go back to a 5-3 split so they can get one of Henshaw or Ringrose in the 23?

Do they stick with the 6-2 and just drop one of the Centres?

Going to be an interesting squad announcement later next week!

Milne is leaving, Boyle isnt.