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

Is he not mostly playing in back row now and not second row anymore?

Soroka could come off the bench in most fixtures. I see he's small for a lock but, benching would be fine.

This final is showing up Leinster badly unfortunately. Bulls have **** the bed and really aren't that good.

You put them through the phases, don't allow them free possession to kick and they begin to panic and make mistakes.

We've a better squad than both sides. We know that through our travails in Europe and the struggles of the respective finalists. We must work out what's happening at the end of season. We don't lack for effort and we've seen some of our players put in blockbuster performances in finals, but tactically we've come up short every time.

Nienaber tried to turn Leinster into South Africa light. He had wrecked any semblance of attacking structure in the team.

They will go nowhere unless this rush defense only (and all other aspects of the game are cast aside) "plan" is abandoned.

Not having this moan about Nienaber destroying Leinster's attacking foundations either.

That system led to feck all trophies in Lancaster's final two seasons either. A change was required and Nienaber brought it.

There's some deeper flaw than a change in systems going on. No idea what it is.

The system was fine, frankly the envy of probably every other team out there. Poor player performance in the the Finals doesn't mean the system was at fault. Nienbar has taken apart the best aspect of Leinster and replaced it with nothing. His lauded defense was undone by the most basic of kicking tactics, which as a SA, he ought to know best how to defend.

I don't think that's an accurate reflection of what happened in those games. Like the Saracens final was a pretty close affair, and if not for mistakes on our part ( giving up tje try befote the half and Ringrose blowing the overlap), eminently winnable.

That's generally been the issue in all our losses, stupid mistakes. Failing to clear out lines vs La Rochelle being the most consistent issue. We dominated them physically for the majority of the game, and had the winning of the last final if JGP looks left at the end to put Baird or Lowe over, or of he is on the same page with Bryne to go for the drop.

But those mistakes are also failures of the system! We had about 20 genuinely good minutes in last season's final. The opening 15 and the final 5-10. Between those minutes we gave La Rochelle easy entries to our 22 with poor kicking, tackling and an inability to deal with their rolling maul.

Our breakdown work was superb and we stole a lot of ball. But we couldn't convert to points or to ever really relieve pressure. Our final score on that game was in the 46th minute. There were 35 minutes left in that game were we predominantly had to defend. We did it heroically until the 70th minute when they scored. But it was all La Rochelle in that half. Our attacking patterns failed and we panicked.

I don't think you can energy wise commit to a high energy blitz defense, and also have an offense that goes through tons of phases with quick ball. You probably have to commit to one or the other.

I honestly think for next year heavily emphasizing becoming excellent at that defensive strategy, and focusing on kicking game, line out maul etc would be a winning strategy. Especially with the right tighthead signing.

Were they though? Sexton and Keenan fluffing a straightforward clearance kick was on them imo, nothing to do with the system. The final last year, we were smashing them back in the rucks, the loss of Ryan being a big factor in the subsequent failure.

Even if, as you say, the system was deficient, it was a 90% solution. Needed to be tweaked and built upon, not wholly thrown out.

I think that's harsh and you don't talk about the rest of the league in your post. The 2nds and wider squad have it much harder than before and its far harder than before for the wider squad and you can't expect them to be anywhere near as dominant in league games as the past and you just ultimately need to accept that.

Don't think you can say both attack and defence are poo and if leinsters defensive structures were so easily exposed they wouldn't have been playing to the stage of their 2 competitions. They'd have been knocked out well before that