Leinster Team Talk/Gossip/Rumours Thread V

molloyjh wrote: »

Byrne was selected for the Leinster Academy when Delahunt wasn't. Thats a decent barometer.

OH Really? McSharry was fired by Leinster and still did Emerging Ireland
Matt Healy is a great winger and came from Dublin
D.Fanning played for Connacht 3 or 4 years ago and was released. Meanwhile he'll play for Leinster t'morrow


Provinces make mistakes with very young talents, hard to anticipate how they develop on a 5-10 years period. they make choices, especially when there are 2 or 3 contenders for a single contract. But these choices are sometimes 45-55, which could easily turn itself to the reverse, in the professional arena

Zzippy wrote: »

Yes but Niyi won't be coming up against McFadden, on the wings it's Poolman v McFadden and Niyi v Fanning. Pretty even IMO.
Also, it's Buckley v Ross in the scrum. Ross on paper but he might be in for a surprise...

TheJackAttack wrote: »

I'm going to say Mc Sharry & Henshaw > Madigan & Macken

Here we are, you illustrate my arguments better! thanks:D

connachta wrote: »

Fionn's a huge disappointment since he came back from Leinster:rolleyes::D

But now I feel obliged to precise I'm not anti-Leinster at all
I was crazy in front of my TV when they beat Clermont in Bordeaux, and Northampton in final. 2 of the best matches I've ever seen!
Peace and love, then:cool:

I didn't think you were being anti Leinster, just myopic

Newly setup I see

https://twitter.com/LaighinPit

Hagz wrote: »

That's the bottom line. Madigan is brilliant when his pack are coasting, but he's lost at sea when the pressure's on.

But that's not a reaction to tonight's game, that's always been the case. Wonderful player but infuriating at times.

Is it a problem with Mads himself though? A couple of thoughts on Leinster after tonight in no particular order:

1. We can be so often guilty of under resourcing our rucks. Whether that's because we want to use forwards as link men so deliberately keep them out of the ruck or just simply players not doing their job I don't know.
2. Our attacking game is painfully predictable. We have 3 settings. Go wide fast, give to forwards standing one out and stationary or the inside ball. Going wide worked really well last week because Scarlets defended narrow, but watch the second half of today back again and see how often we created space. I'd say you could count it on one hand, if at all.
3. MOC doesn't seem to trust younger players. What players can we point to that he has brought through? Moore was starting to get game time under Joe. Furlong and Byrne are about the only 2 that spring to mind. What young backs has he shown any faith in? Is that because the players themselves aren't up to it or because MOC is too conservative?
4. Half backs are proving to be a real problem for Leinster. Particularly out-half. Neither Mads nor Gopperth appear to be able to control a game. They can look great when given the time and space, but otherwise they can be made to look painfully average. Sexton should help here, but MOCs reliance on Boss and refusal to give Luke McGrath any real game time is becoming more than a joke at this stage. How the hell can a player kick on without game time? He's captained Leinster A and Ireland U20 sides but as soon as he's knocking on the senior door he's ignored.
5. Players are looking like they are getting frustrated and not sticking with the system when things are going against them. That to me shows a real lack of faith in what they are being told to do. Look at Rob Kearney today running down blind alleys trying to make something happen. Individuals are forcing things and making errors as a result. If they had faith in the systems this shouldn't be happening.

That's 2 of 3 performances that simply weren't good enough. And while some are happy to put that down to early season rustiness I don't think we can ignore the fact that this kind of performance was a common thing last season. When did we last put together 3 or 4 successive performances?

I was one of the first to publicly question MOC. I have said repeatedly that despite my misgivings he needed to be given time. And maybe this is an emotive response to today, but he really needs to get this together soon. We need to start putting in successive performances before Christmas. If we fail to do that then we need to call it. It should not take a good coach a year and a half to get a team with Leinsters quality to play well for a couple of weeks in a row. If he can't do it in that time then how can we have any faith that he'll do it at all?

I dearly hope he can do it and we can move on from this because if we can't I'd be genuinely worry about the short term impact that could have on this squad. Getting a winning mentality back can be a lot harder than losing it. And if we lose it it'll take a really good coach to turn things around.

thomond2006 wrote: »

You're going for five in a row against Munster in the Aviva and seven in a row in Dublin (if you include the 30-0 and the ML Semi-Final win at the RDS).

Now that just won't do.

I wonder can I eject you from our group? :cool:

former legend wrote: »

I said it in the preview to the Connacht game and unfortunately I was proved right. Madigan is not a 12 and tonight showed why. Connacht got all up in his sh*t and he couldn't cope. Hopefully this is the end of it now D'Arcy is back.

Rest of the post-mortem to follow.

former legend wrote: »

He's a 22 I'm afraid.

Thing is on tonight you could say the same for Gopperth, and if Madigan had put in the same performance Gopperth did from 10 he'd be slaughtered from everywhere, ditto for the Glasgow game.

As much it is is true that Madigan is favoured by a lot of fans, he is also hyper analysed to an extent way beyond Gopperth, every performance is put in an Irish context and his future is judged upon it. Gopperth does get criticised but nobody really cares or focus on his development because he's not Irish and was only ever going to be a short term player for us, and these posts are pretty much a prime example of that

We're playing Cardiff at home next week who we should absolutely look to smash and I'd like to see Madigan at 10 outside Reddan with D'Arcy at 12 and Macken at 13, who remarkably was probably the only back who came out of the game somewhat positively