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Extra.ie
15 hours ago
- Sport
- Extra.ie
Ireland v Georgia: What you need to know ahead of huge test for Ireland's prop idols
When you think of scrums, the Georgians immediately spring to mind. When it comes to the dark arts of the set piece, the Lelos are the masters. Many Tier One forward units have packed down against Georgia and still bear the scars – both mental and physical – from the experience. The nation that straddles Europe and Asia has always produced giant forwards and hardy props who love to scrum. A 2018 training session between England and Georgia on a school training pitch in West London still lives in infamy. Then England head coach Eddie Jones felt his forwards could do with a scrummaging session against the Georgians, and it proved a sobering afternoon for the hosts. 27 February 2016; Stuart McCloskey, Ireland, is tackled by Dylan Hartley, England. Pic: Stephen McCarthy / SPORTSFILE 'We got a hiding that day,' former England captain Dylan Hartley recalled years later. Joe Marler got through a gruelling shift on the loosehead side of the scrum and remembers that referee Wayne Barnes, who was bussed in to bring a bit of order to all the chaos, began to fear for the well-being of the English pack. 'We had a five metre scrum and it was under the sticks near one of the posts, and he said, 'wait, hang on a minute' and he moved the scrum 10 metres away from the posts because he was worried we were going to go back so fast that there would be an injury going into this post.' This is what a young Irish pack will be facing this weekend. This rising rugby nation has long been banging on the door for further exposure. Pleas to be included in the Six Nations or at least a shot at gaining a seat at the championship table through a promotion bid have fallen on deaf ears for years, despite Georgia claiming recent wins against Wales and Italy. Caelan Doris. Pic: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile On Saturday, they will look to make a big statement against a Six Nations heavyweight. Ireland arrives in Tbilisi this week for a match at Mikheil Meskhi Stadium. The visitors are without 16 frontliners, who are on Lions duty in Australia, while key players such as Caelan Doris and Robbie Henshaw have been ruled out through injury. Cian Healy, Peter O'Mahony and Conor Murray have all called it a day. So, this is a depleted Irish squad which, lest we forget, is shorn of head coach Andy Farrell and a host of assistant coaches and key backroom members. But it would still be a huge scalp for the Georgians. They will be fired up for this meeting. Their home stadium will be packed to the rafters, and, despite the 9 pm local kick-off time, it is expected to be a sweltering night in their capital city. Pic: Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images) This young and experimental Irish team is going to feel the heat all evening, especially at scrum time. It almost feels like this fixture was engineered to stress test the next generation of Irish props. Much has been made about the depth, or lack thereof, in the Irish front-row departments of late. This is not a new development. John Hayes and his successor Mike Ross effectively propped up Irish scrums for the best part of two decades between them. It was only when Andrew Porter emerged on the scene to back up Tadhg Furlong that Ireland seemed to have genuine depth at tighthead. Porter was subsequently shifted over to the loosehead side. The situation was so bad last year that the newly-appointed IRFU performance director, David Humphreys, announced that the provinces would need to adhere to a recruitment freeze on overseas front-rowers the following season. Humphreys has rowed back on that stance. Thomas Clarkson. Pic: Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile The emergence of Jack Boyle and Thomas Clarkson in the Leinster system was seen as a positive development, while Michael Milne and Lee Barron moving to Munster was another encouraging move. And Ireland's next generation of young front-rowers are set to be put to the test this weekend. Furlong, Finlay Bealham and Porter are on Lions duty, while Healy has hung up his boots. The Leinster stalwart was still going strong at 37 last season, but the fact that his province and country were still leaning so heavily on him as a back-up to Porter said everything about the lack of trust in the younger candidates. Now, interim head coach Paul O'Connell is set to pit a front row of greenhorns against one of the fiercest scrummaging packs in the world. An all-Leinster front row of Boyle (23), Gus McCarthy (21) and Clarkson (25) are primed to start in Tbilisi. This could be a massive weekend in the burgeoning careers of three front-rowers with a combined total of 12 caps between them. McCarthy was a breakout star of the autumn internationals series when the academy hooker was handed a Test debut against Fiji at Aviva Stadium. Now that Dan Sheehan and Ronan Kelleher are on Lions special ops, he has another brilliant opportunity to move further up the pecking order. Boyle and Clarkson have both made massive strides in the past 12 months. The former made two impressive late cameos from the bench against Wales and Italy in the Six Nations. Clarkson's one and only Ireland start came against the Welsh in Cardiff. The Leinster tighthead had a tough afternoon, but he has clearly learned from the experience. Clarkson has always been a mobile prop who gets through plenty of work around the park. His scrummaging has notably improved as well, however. The URC final felt like a big day in his career. A giant Bulls pack – featuring monstrous Springbok tighthead Wilco Louw – was widely tipped to do a demolition job on a Leinster pack that was without the services of the injured Furlong. But head coach Leo Cullen made a big show of faith in Clarkson, keeping renowned French tighthead Rabah Slimani in reserve and backing the young tighthead to lock out the Leinster scrum. And Clarkson excelled as the South Africans were put to the sword in Croke Park. Another big shift against the Georgians and Clarkson can look forward to more exposure, with Leinster and Ireland, in the coming years. The same goes for Boyle. Because the Georgians are the ultimate test in this area. No better time to see if Ireland's fledgling props have the right stuff.
Irish Times
17-06-2025
- Sport
- Irish Times
Gerry Thornley: The true story of Leinster in the 2020s is one of remarkable success
In the decade between 2012 and 2021, Mayo reached six All-Ireland football finals and lost them all – three of them by a single point and one of those after a replay. Including the draw in 2016, their average losing margin in seven finals was less than 2.5 points. Some people apparently regard them as chokers, which is a joke really. As John Barclay said on Premier Sports last Saturday, losing a semi-final is possibly preferable to doing so in a final. In truth, for that Mayo team to keep picking themselves up off the canvas after each bitter disappointment in order to start all over again in pursuit of their holy grail shows incredible strength of character. It would be so much easier to give up and walk away. Three of their six losses were against Jim Gavin's six-in-a-row side, widely considered to be the best Gaelic football team of all time. Nobody pushed that Dubs side harder than Mayo. No other county came close. Yet they received nothing like the same scrutiny. By comparison, they were all given a free pass. Yes, you can see where this is going. At the recent Rugby Players of Ireland awards ceremony, Andrew Trimble, in his inimitably laconic way, asked Mayo native Caelan Doris if he had passed on the curse. To which Doris replied he has actually won at Croke Park. READ MORE Perhaps there is a slight irony in Doris, Jack Conan and Cian Healy finally lifting Leinster's first trophy in four seasons there last Saturday after an emphatic 32-7 win over the Bulls . Again, though, some jokers still regard this Leinster side as chokers. This is because, since their 2021 Pro14 success behind closed doors, Leinster had lost three successive Champions Cup finals against La Rochelle, in Marseille and Dublin, and Toulouse, in London. In May, they added a Champions Cup semi-final defeat to Northampton at home. The province had also lost three successive URC semi-finals. The margins in those seven defeats were: three points, one, nine (having finished level after 80 minutes), three, one, one and five. In every one, the game was in the balance until the last play of the 80 minutes. Leinster's Johnny Sexton talks to referee Wayne Barnes during the 2022 Champions Cup final. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho Leinster certainly haven't been awash with luck. They'd have won the 2022 Champions Cup final in Marseille but for Wayne Barnes penalising Ross Molony in the jackal on the premise that Michael Alaalatoa hadn't rolled away. No amount of replays will convince Molony or this columnist that the Leinster prop hadn't sufficiently manoeuvred himself out of the way. One final where the 'choker' tag might have some validation is the 27-26 loss to La Rochelle in 2023. Leinster had led by 17-0 and then 23-7, but they didn't score a point after the 46th minute. That statistic and zero second-half passes between the entire backline outside Ross Byrne was evidence of how they stopped playing. Still, that was Ronan O'Gara's La Rochelle team at their irresistible best. They deserved credit for the comeback, which had shades of Leinster's fightback in the 2011 decider against Northampton. In the pulsating 2024 final at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Leinster came within a whisker of sealing a win in the 80th minute via Ciarán Frawley's drop goal attempt. He nailed two against the Springboks in Durban a few weeks later. Again, they received hardly any of the 50-50 calls from Matthew Carley, most notably when identical offences by Anthony Jelonch and James Lowe – in slapping the ball over the touchline – received contrasting punishments. Toulouse were widely acclaimed as the best French club side ever, with the sport's greatest player as their captain and talisman. Further putting that epic 2024 final in London into perspective, five weeks later Toulouse beat Bordeaux Bègles by 59-3 at the Stade de France, a record winning margin for a final in the history of the French Championship. Only one other team has reached three successive Champions Cup finals but, naturally, Leinster receive little or no credit for that, or for much else. In the last four seasons they've won 91 matches, drawn one and lost 20. In the Champions Cup they've won 27 out of 31 games. They've put 40 on Toulouse (twice) and La Rochelle, whom they've also beaten twice in a row away. They've entertained royally, played some thrilling rugby and scored oodles of great tries. Leinster's Andrew Porter celebrates with champagne in the dressing room after the URC final. Photograph: Ben Brady/Inpho In the aftermath of Saturday's final, head coach Leo Cullen – who might well have considered stepping down had Leinster not won – wondered aloud as to what constitutes success or failure. The line between them is not so blurred anymore, and in Leinster's case it is seemingly judged solely by whether they win the Champions Cup or not. Hence, the one that got away is this year's defeat against Northampton, one of only two semi-final losses suffered by home sides in the last decade. As Tommy O'Brien admitted – although Ryan Baird refutes the theory utterly – Leinster were 'flat' in their ensuing games but rediscovered their buzz in the last fortnight when convincingly dethroning the champions and then their nearest challengers, who beat them in last season's semi-finals. That still doesn't completely ease the pain from that Northampton defeat, which has been deemed a non-show but was perhaps more accurately a delayed show in what was one of the games of the season. It must still bemuse Leinster as much as us, and in the absence of a Antoine Dupont-less Toulouse, is compounded by Bordeaux Bègles awaiting in a Cardiff final and thoughts of what might have been. Ultimately, though, Leinster won one of only two trophies on offer and reached the semi-final of the other. They also won 25 of 28 matches. They earned a half-dozen home play-off ties to further swell the coffers. They provided a record dozen Lions. Season ticket holders are up to 15,000 ahead of returning to an expanded RDS. With any other club, region or province, that would be considered a successful season. Anyone other than Leinster. The URC has never been harder to win and yet no team has ever been more deserving champions. Maybe it's time they cut themselves a little slack. And maybe it's time we did too. gerrythornley@
Irish Times
16-06-2025
- Sport
- Irish Times
Croke Park filled with relief and joy after Leinster shake off ‘nearly men' tag to win URC
Take a bow again, Leinster . The United Rugby Championship , in all its many iterations over the last quarter of a century, has never been harder to win, and yet never have there been more convincing and deserving champions. Having topped the regular-season table, when scoring the most tries and points while conceding the least, Leinster made it 18 wins in 21 matches by applying the coup de grace with a commanding 32-7 win over the Bulls to properly mark Saturday's historic final at Croke Park. The South Africans had finished second and were one of the only two teams to have beaten Leinster, thanks to a last-minute scrum penalty against an understrength side at home last March. But ultimately, Leinster were first and the rest nowhere as they banished some of the demons generated by three final losses and four semi-final defeats across both competitions – the URC and Champions Cup – in the last four seasons. Judged by the highest standards, which Leinster set themselves and almost everybody else sets for them too, they'll still have a few regrets about the season – well one game anyway . However, this emphatic triumph was a mighty weight off their shoulders. READ MORE 'It's great to get back to winning ways and to win at home at an iconic stadium,' said captain-for-the-day Jack Conan, reflecting the sense of relief, satisfaction and joy among players, backroom staff and supporters alike after he shared the trophy lift with Caelan Doris and Cian Healy. So many lads here have never won anything for Leinster — Jack Conan 'Does it mean more than the other ones? Look, we just take it day by day,' added Conan. 'But yeah, it's an unbelievably long year because you've got to go to South Africa after we've just finished up the Six Nations, so it's tough.' Indeed, compared to the scattered sprints of the Champions Cup, the URC is more of a 10-month marathon and thus requires more of a squad effort. Leinster used 58 players in the course of their campaign and Conan made special reference to those who rolled up their sleeves against the Bulls in Pretoria and when beating the Sharks 10-7 a week after that defeat to the Bulls. Leinster's Dan Sheehan and Ross Byrne celebrate with the URC trophy. Photograph: Ben Brady/Inpho What's more, they also depowered the Bulls on Saturday and put them to the sword despite Jamison Gibson-Park joining Tadhg Furlong, Doris and Hugo Keenan among the absentees. 'I know a lot of them lads weren't playing today,' said Conan, and in fact 17 of the matchday squad in Durban were not involved in this final, 'but we wouldn't be here if it wasn't for those lads and what they did over there. 'So many lads here have never won anything for Leinster. They've won a load of stuff for Ireland, they've won Grand Slams, Triple Crowns and things, but never won anything for Leinster. We wanted to make it a special day for them, for the lads that are leaving, and fundamentally we just wanted to perform. 'Whether we won by one point, or whatever the scoreline at the end, we just wanted to perform and we did that. I think that's the most pleasing thing. We've been building nicely the last few weeks, and to go out and properly put on a performance today is incredibly special.' One of those finals and three of the semi-finals had been lost at home and the latest of them – six weeks ago against Northampton – weighed heavily. Hence this trophy lift, lap of honour and a second trophy lift in the Hogan Stand – at the prompting of their media manager Marcus Ó Buachalla – was all the more joyous given Leinster were lifting their first silverware in front of a home crowd since 2018. The 2019 title was won in Glasgow and the two that followed were behind closed doors, which rather took the joy out of it. Maybe that's partly what prompted a healthy turnout of 46,127 after just six days' ticket sales. It eclipsed the previous record attendance for a final in Ireland when Leinster completed the double by beating the Scarlets in the Aviva in 2018. 'They are the memories really,' said head coach Leo Cullen of the post-match celebrations in front of their supporters, and he paid particular thanks to families and friends. Leinster's Jimmy O'Brien, Jordie Barrett and Rabah Slimani celebrate. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho 'The players and the staff, we're in our own little world, it's the families that have to deal with the brunt of it. The majority of the players are home-grown talent, it is not like a normal professional franchise where people are brought in from wherever, and they probably get it in the neck the most. 'The people [I'm] most happy for is the family and friends who support the players and staff associated with the team through thick and thin. At least it wasn't one of those 'hold on', one-score games at the end, so they were probably able to enjoy the moment. Listen, that's what sport is about, isn't it. It's bloody hard to win anything.' He knows more than anybody. Cullen took the brunt of the flak for three trophyless seasons and that Northampton defeat, as well as dealing with its implications, along with injuries and the sideshow of a dozen Lions. After each of the five ensuing wins, that Northampton scar was referenced. 'You don't get any bonus for winning well,' he said. 'We started off the season of knock-out games winning a game here very well (62-0 v Harlequins), then won a game six days later very well (52-0 v Glasgow), then it's not that the wheels fall off, but you lose a very tight game and then have to deal with the fallout from that. 'But that's just the way it is, that's just part of the territory. That's professional sport, that's the nature of it. It is what it is.' Those other semi-final and final losses were also in his thoughts. 'We've lost in different ways, at the death, after extra-time, but you've just got to keep putting ourselves in that position and keep pushing the boundaries of what we do. You get criticism when you lose, [but] it still doesn't take away from what, personally speaking, I love doing. 'Pressure is great; it's part and parcel of sport. It's a great way to feel alive, we're lucky to be involved in it,' he said, before suggesting that coping with the high expectations is perhaps not always so great. 'Keep the abuse coming,' said Cullen cheerily. 'We don't mind. Thick skins.'
Irish Times
14-06-2025
- Sport
- Irish Times
Leinster Jack Conan relishes ‘incredibly special' moments at Croke Park following URC win
Jack Conan described sharing the URC trophy lift with Caelan Doris and Cian Healy as 'incredibly special' after Leinster's 32-7 win over the Bulls in the final at Croke Park. The Leinster captain also credited their media manager Marcus O'Buachalla for the idea of paying homage to All-Ireland winning teams by conducting a second trophy lift in the Hogan Stand. 'It's not something you could ever dream of when you were growing up, or even in the last few years because obviously it has been so long since we had played here as a club,' said Conan after Leinster's fifth and most significant win of their five visits to the iconic home of the GAA. 'So, it's not something that was ever you on your radar but it's just fantastic. I know it wasn't full today but there were 46-odd thousand people and we could feel every single one of them. READ MORE [ URC Grand Final: Five things we learned as Leinster end trophy drought after four years Opens in new window ] 'We could hear their voices and they got behind us. They stayed after the final whistle for us to do a lap. One of the big reasons we do what we do is to give back to the people who come to support us through the good days and the bad days. 'It's incredibly pertinent that we give them something to celebrate. I think everyone is just elated.' Conan said he had 'absolutely no idea' whose idea it was before venturing: 'Marcus O'Buachalla! He needs a shout out at least once a week!' He added: 'I was conscious of the lads trying to lift up my shirt and making an absolute mug of me so I was tucking that in. Leinster's Andrew Porter celebrates with champagne in the dressing room after the game. Photograph: Ben Brady/Inpho 'Look, to be on the Hogan Stand to lift a trophy with all your mates, family, loved ones, it's incredibly special and something that will live long in the memory. 'I had a few words as Gaeilge but I was told my pronunciation was all over the place, so they told me not to do it! I don't think they wanted me to do a speech. I was told less is more!' Asked if the squad had emphasised the need to mark the occasion with an 80-minute performance, Conan said: 'No. We went the complete opposite way. We spoke about taking it moment by moment, being where your feet are and not getting ahead of ourselves. 'We knew it would be unbelievably physical. There's no point focusing on the bigger pressure, it's on the here and now. I thought we dealt really well with how direct they were at the end of the first half. They were attacking our line hard and we're holding them out and some of those shots were incredible,' said Conan, admitting the two extended goal-line defensive sets leading up to the interval which kept their 19-0 lead intact typified the team's performance. 'It boils down to man on man and wanting to put your head where you wouldn't put a shovel. Getting off the line and trying to whack people. 'You can lose focus a little bit and think about rugby, all the different parts of it, but it's a physical game, and what we teed ourselves up for all week was the physical battle, and I think we did that throughout.' Leo Cullen said this triumph was for everybody in the organisation and especially the 46,127 in attendance, which was a record for a final in Dublin. Leinster's RG Snyman and Jamison Gibson-Park celebrate after the game. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho 'It was an amazing atmosphere out there today. Normally when you're in the Aviva, you're in a glass coaches' box and you're way off getting the sense of the occasion. Two Wicklow lads here getting involved in a final at Croke Park, a rare sight,' Cullen added, referencing himself and Conan. 'It's a very difficult competition to win, just the nature of the way the season is and there's a lot of great teams involved. The South African teams have been an amazing addition to the tournament. The Bulls are a great team.' Leinster's win earned them a first trophy in four seasons and after losing three finals and four semi-finals since last winning the Pro14 behind closed doors in 2021. 'Is your season, when you get to a final, a success or a failure,' asked Cullen rhetorically. 'Unfortunately, you guys, the way you write, the losers of a final suddenly are failures, whereas you get to the last day of the competition, I think you need to celebrate the two teams that are in the final. 'Obviously we've been on the flip side of that in the past. Does that deem us failures? I personally don't think it's a failure. We win today, it's great but we'll move on to the next challenge. We'll watch the guys that are on tour with Ireland and the Lions. That's a big part of what we want to try and do as well, push guys on to play at the next level. 'The rest of us will take a break, put the feet up for a while and spend time with family and friends.' Leinster head coach Leo Cullen with Jordie Barrett after the game. Photograph: Ben Brady/Inpho For his part, the Bulls' World Cup winning head coach Jake White heaped praise on Leinster in admitting they were eminently worthy winners on the day and champions over the season. 'This is not a normal team,' said White of Leinster. 'I made a note that they were 19-0 up and they bring on RG Snyman. It's just a different league. Leinster fans have been waiting for that 40-minute first-half performance all season. They are well coached and I don't know them all but I met Josh van der Flier and he's world-class and world-class as a person. 'They are the benchmark and have been for four years. That's our third loss in a final and now I have to try and find out how to turn silver into gold.' White also cited the 'seamless' change Leinster made at scrumhalf by bringing in Luke McGrath for Jamison Gibson-Park, and noted how Leinster targeted a Bulls' area of strength, their scrum. 'That's what international teams do,' said White, adding: 'We've been in three finals and that was by far the toughest final. That was another level up. That was another level up. That was Test rugby.' On how quickly Leinster realigned in defence and attack, White remarked: 'It was like everything was in fast forward. For our players they saw a different, organised tempo than they've seen all season. That's a phenomenal team.
Irish Daily Mirror
13-06-2025
- Sport
- Irish Daily Mirror
Leinster are one win from glory, one loss from the sky falling on their head
Leinster are in the dock at Croke Park, on the northside too, standing accused of not being able to lift that having repeatedly got on-site during four Champions Cup and three URC raids they emerged empty-handed, without any of the silverware or gold medals on offer. Leinster, the club, may have seven of the 10 letters in the word larcenists but, damningly, none of the sticky fingers associated. Welcome to the 2025 URC Grand Final where if Leinster come up empty-handed again, there will be blood on the coaches' dance floor and somebody - either the most successful club coach in Irish history or a double-RWC winning one - will be job-hunting. This is, remember, a club with a dozen 2025 Lions and, notwithstanding Caelan Doris, Will Connors, Robbie Henshaw being injured and ex-Lion Cian Healy retiring, have another dozen players on the Ireland summer are bolstered by a close to €1m package funding All Black Jordie Barrett, double-Rugby World Cup winner RG Snyman and French propping legend Rabah Slimani.A Leinster who may catch all the plaudits, be greatly admired and much feted from near and far, do well off their budget when it is compared to Top 14 clubs and have a wonderful, working, pathway/Academy who, come the pointy end of the season, have repeatedly dropped the ball in semi-finals and finals. It's a mystery. Call Hercule Poirot even if he is Belgian, phone Humphrey Bogart's private eye Philip Marlow, or send for Sherlock Holmes or, how about, his now much-feted teenage sister Enola Holmes if you like and ask them to ask what they make of the puzzle. A good place fore them to start maybe wondering whether Leinster are suffering from being 'Club Ireland'. There is little disguising the Leinster collective having morphed into the Ireland World Cup/Six Nations team with former Leinster Academy man Tadhg Beirne and three southern hemisphere products operating out of Connacht in Bundee Aki, Mack Hansen and Finlay Bealham tagged this translates to, intentionally or not, their seeing club rugby as a way of getting fit and peaking for international rugby then God only knows how they are mentally juggling Leinster-Ireland-Lions. The sheer joy of the Northampton players when they defeated Leinster in the recent Champions Cup semi-final carried over into the after-match proceedings - they were verily bouncing off the walls. A joy rarely seen from Leinster wins these days, there seems to be an auto-pilot in the mix. Whether they celebrate Leinster wins the way they celebrate Ireland wins is worth asking. Leinster assistant coach Jacques Nienaber is the most celebrated Defence Coach in the world. He was Rassie Erasmus's second-in-command for the 'Boks RWC 2019 win and Head Coach for the 'Boks RWC 2023 famously once said his coaching system would take 14 games to bed-in but this was at the start of last if you believe there is no such thing as a 'good' missed tackle or if, being less didactic, believe there is a problem with repeated missed tackles and that there is a certain amount required to be made in each game, then don't get into an argument with Nienaber. Leinster's three quarter-line for this evening's game has Tommy O'Brien who makes 58 percent of his tackles, Ringrose 51 per cent, Barrett 74 percent and James Lowe's 40 percent. This evening's full-back Jimmy O'Brien has a 79 percent tackle completion rate and he may be needed not least as the much criticised defensively Sam Prendergast brings a 50 percent completion rate to the party (Ross Byrne's is 88 percent!).There is a potential explanation of the Northampton loss in there. The Saints had a winger score a hat-trick, a flanker going blind-side and skating past the tackles. 37 points is a helluva lots of points to concede, to have to overhaul in a knockout game. At the same time apologies, that's a negative interpretation as to how rugby should be is a 2025 Lion, the best attacking no13 in Europe if not the world and he will be playing outside the best no12 in the attacking threat is ever-present, not least for his ability to keep the ball alive with inventive, clever offloads and his auxiliary kicking is a feature while Prendergast has a prodigious eye for a set of bigger-picture figures that have to be balanced, weighed up with, say, missing every second or third they are figures suggest that firstly Leinster are flat-track bullies, certainly against the bottom six/seven/eight URC outfits. And secondly, given their quality players can hold onto the ball, that they are very difficult to overhaul once they are this: The IRFU allowed a failed Ireland RWC 2019 to be glossed over when their official report blamed 'Performance Anxiety' - possibly the most infantile concept since nappies. Professional sportsmen are paid to 'perform' and on the back of those performances are in a salary meritocracy. Perform well, get more money, get picked again. How did the Performance Anxiety XV get to the top of the log in the first place?But if there is such a thing as Performance Anxiety, Leinster must have it not so much inadvertently picked as a virus but from the idea of it actually existing. Once you convince yourself it exists, it is too handy a crutch, an easy explanation. A little more practical self-scrutiny might help. Memo to Leinster committee in advent of losing this final, buy the players mirrors for Christmas so they can look at themselves in it. Because, make no mistake, repeated failure to win a tournament is building and building and contrary to accepted common sense. The players are not bad players, the collective have gotten it right most of the time and are able to get themselves into position to win a result the spotlight is turning more and more on coach Leo Cullen and assistant there something fundamentally wrong, not so much with selection based on empirical evidence that the player should have the jersey, but a flawed understanding of their individual make-ups in pressure is, for instance, under IRFU/Andy Farrell instruction that, once both are fit, to pick James Ryan and Joe McCarthy ahead of Snyman; he has more leeway with Barrett but still had to fill a quota for the Henshaw-Ringrose pairing. Moreover Cullen was told that the onus was on him to pick Prendergast this season, to bring him on with Ireland in mind, have him ready for the November series and first-choice by the Six is unlikely Cullen could have jettisoned Prendergast for the final had he wanted to but it is telling Ross Byrne is on the bench in a five-three split and not Ciaran Frawley or Jamie Osborne in a has the option to withdraw Prendergast if he wishes; if this isn't going well in the first-half, it will be a measure of this current management's decisiveness as to when they start to change the as it mightn't need Poirot, Marlow, Sherlock and Enola to detect, that really would be the point where the sky was falling on their that's a bit panicky, premature, apologies as Leinster take the field as massive favourites to win a game against a Bulls side who are an extremely blunt instrument and have very little matching the skill-levels and experience the Blues possess. Leinster can be backed at 1/5 - and most likely can only defeat themselves. Performance Anxiety, you ol' ambusher...
