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

in fairness that type of behaviour has been going on for years.

I remember work colleagues who were Munster supporters, but were supporting Leicester in the 09 final. The level of begrudgery is nothing new.

Snyman out for Munster! Whatever ails him, I hope he's over it next season!

Fair enough. Everybody is entitled to cheer who they want. And that will include me cheering for our biggest rivals today against Northampton.

A significant reason being that the more irish teams that go deeper in tournament, the more money that is going around the irfu to keep the game going.

I've found myself blocked on twitter by some lads who are trying to do a podcast (which seems a strange way of alienating listeners) for expressing the same thing. You don't have to like a province just because they are Irish. It's supposed to be a rivalry!

I'm occasionally surprised though that even Leinster for a Munster fan isn't the lesser of two evils (against Saracens or a Toulon maybe) but it is what it is!

He doesn't need to go to Cork for the week, the same number of Munster/La Rochelle fans will be at the game even if he didn't go down.

It's all part of ROG and his mind games stuff, like the nonsense last year about Dublin not been home etc. If it works he is a genius, if it doesn't then people will quickly forget and move on.

ROG is pushing La Rochelle as the poor little French club, fighting against all the big boys with their big budgets.

In fact La Rochelle are more akin to Toulon than any other club, they are in a small town, the squad is just a list of talent from all over the World, they don't have an exceptional academy(like Toulouse etc) and the entire population of La Rochelle would fit into twickers. The main difference is they don't have a big mouth owner blowing about how much money they spent.

Will they be a sustainable club long term? ROG probably doesn't care because if it starts to turn then he can jump ship and move on.

Plenty of interesting questions for next week:

What is our second row pairing?

Has Conan played his way into the starting side?

Is there reason to potentially go with a 6-2?

Does Ross start at 10 again or Harry?

Watched both matches yesterday. Thought La Rochelle were blessed to win that game. But win they did and it's the sign of a great team. Their season started yesterday.

Think we are going to have a real job on our hands with no Ryan available. Bench has been a real weapon for us but I do wonder if we push Baird to lock and bring Conan into the backrow. He's in serious form.

Would also prefer Harry at 10 over Ross who just looks a little inaccurate since coming back from the injury.

We will need our lineout to be spot on next week. If we get that going and it's a dry track, I think we might sneak it. Very hard to call.

Should be either Jenkins or Baird to second row and Conan at 6 but worry is without Ryan, there are no line out callers bar Molony i don’t think, so I’ve no idea what is the way to go in the second row.

Has to be 6-2 with Connors either starting or on the bench. Mike, Healy, Kelleher, Molony/Jenkins, Connors/VDF Conan if not starting/Deegan if he is, McGrath, Frawley.

Harry is in better form so would go with him. R Byrne was a speed bump yesterday. Danty and Allritt will have a field day running at him all day.

Baird should continue at blindside. His best performances over the last year have come in the backrow. He gets his hands on the ball more can soften a defensive line with his carrying.

We've a big question over our lineout. In Ryan's absence Molony leads that set piece. But it's been struggling for a while now. He's not a hyper physical lock so do we start Jenkins in place of him to help counter La Rochelle's power?

I kind of stopped looking after a while! So messy.

Free kick against Leicester for early engagement then in next scrum free kick against Leinster for stepping back!

Next scrum took a full minute to set up and was reset. Then clock was stopped as he talked to both hookers and free kick against Leinster after Cole was on his knees. Steady scrum at last.

A set of 3 scrums took just over 3mins of actual time.

Even when Kelleher, Healy and Ala were on early second half it descended into more resets. And I stopped paying attention once Montoya and Cole (savvy scrummagers) started yapping.

And credit to James Cronin. He should be back in Ireland (thanks again JvG) considering the state of LH depth.

It's hard to say what we should do re the lineout and maul.

Last season we didn't jump on La Rochelle's throw because we wanted to set up a strong maul defence. But they pulverised that anyway and made metres for fun. We'll need to challenge in the air, I think. But also need some bulk to stop the ball. I'm not sure we can do both without James Ryan.

I'm in now, 250 ahead of me and no promo tickets 2 for €100 showing up?

Munster out just in time for their fans to get on the La Rochelle bandwagon.

It was a joke.