Leinster Llanelli Saturday

Crash

Sexton starting at 10, contepomi moving to 12 alongside berne, with kearney at fullback. Keogh coming in for gleeson at 6, much the same team other than that. Looks like a good strong leinster squad.

Opinions?

LeeroyJones

perhaps a glimpse of the future, with Sexton perhaps being the regular 10 next season and Gleeson retiring. however i realise its rare to have both D'arcy and BOD injured at the same time for such a long time, but Berne at 13-i have my reservations, although he did do well last week i felt. perhaps give Fitzgerald a run at 13?! so he'd see more of the ball.

Crash

Well presumably depending on hwo the game runs and how well berne plays we may see dempsey come in at fullback, rob switch to the wing, and either fitz or shaggy come in to the centre.

dc69

wish they would put fitz at 13,he aint gona get much chances when bod comes back,berne has no future with Ireland,he is a journeyman player at best.very stupid decision imo.

Good news about sexton though

Was cheika not looking when fitzgerald got the ball in midfield and ran the pitch evading about 5 tackles,waste of talent on the wing.

wixfjord

Gonna take a lot of balls for leinster to win this one. Massive game. Scarlets line up is very strong too (backs wise anyway) and teams (especially Leinster:rolleyes:) dont find it easy to come back from wales with a win. Good to see Sexton at 10. Might be won in the forwards as Leinsters front 5 are on paper stronger.

zAbbo

Dropping Fitz into a position he's only played 1 game at professional level, away from home is probably not the best idea.

dc69

zAbbo wrote: »

Dropping Fitz into a position he's only played 1 game at professional level, away from home is probably not the best idea.

your prob right,i just really dont rate beirne at all

Sangre

zAbbo wrote: »

Dropping Fitz into a position he's only played 1 game at professional level, away from home is probably not the best idea.

I agree.

He should be tested at this position at an international level first.

RuggieBear

berne is a better tackler than fitzgerald. The last time we played the scarlets king had ****ing field day against carr (iirc) and almost single handedly thrashed us. Cheika doesn't want a repeat.

[Jackass]

Massive game, especially since they handed us our ass on a plate earlier in the season.

I think we have a strong team out though and can definitley come away with a result. A win pretty much brings it down to a 2 horse race, and would love to see us wrap up the league at home to Munster in 2 weeks

I don't really rate Berne as anything other than average myself, would prefer to have seen:

10. Sexton
11. Fitzgerald
12. Contepomi
13. Horgan
14. Kearney
15. Dempsey

Going to be very tight. Sexton needs a big game, it's tough coming back from injury and this game being your first start. I'm going to go with Leinster by less than 7.

The Mighty Ken

Is it just my imagination or is this only being aired on Setanta Sports 2?

Jello

The Mighty Ken wrote: »

Is it just my imagination or is this only being aired on Setanta Sports 2?

Yep, they're showing it live, Setanta Ireland are showing it again at 8:50pm.

The Mighty Ken

Jello wrote: »

Yep, they're showing it live, Setanta Ireland are showing it again at 8:50pm.

Nightmare. I'm going to have to go to the boozer to watch it so. Not that that's a bad thing being Saturday and all Would have preferred to watch it in the comfort of my own home.

Looking forward to see how Fitz fares.

dc69

this should be a good match,bookies have scarlets fav,I reckon Leinster by 7

bleg

i say llaneli by 1 or 2

RuggieBear

think Regan king will destroy us again.

dc69

if we play well,we can beat anyone.bearing in mind the opposition arent the best and we are mising key players,we will have our work cut out but if sexton kicks well,we can do it.Dr phil is quality at 12 aswell.

I hope they let sexton kick the goals,what good is he as an ogara backup if he cant kick goals.

bleg

true, needs to put in a good performance. didn't see the ulster match last night but o connor played well last weekend. jury is still out on dunne.

zAbbo

Starts in 10minutes on Setanta Sports 2

dc69

****,its pissing.Sexton gona have his work cut out.

bren2002

I've E4 on a draw @35/1

RuggieBear

\o/

JC 2K3

I'm watching it on S4C.

I thought we should have gone for another scrum there....

Still, 3 points is 3 points.

RuggieBear

\o/

[Jackass]

Half time, Llanelli 3 - Leinster 17.

Complete domination in the first half. Only complaint could be the option of taking the 3 points when we could have kept the pressure on with the 5 metre scrum, I reckon we would have gotten in and that would be 3 tries by half time.

But other than that, playing the territory is working nicely, Llanelli don't seem to be at the races at all at the back and could be looking at pushing on for a bonus point victory here

JC 2K3

\o/ +1

Impressive stuff.

barnesd

Well we have the Llanelli pack on toast so if we play to the same gameplan in the 2nd half and cut the mistakes I really can't see a way back into the game for Llanelli. Excellent stuff so far anyway, BP is not out of the question.

JC 2K3

Bah...

What happened?

themont85

Scarlets are getting all the decisions, Whits is binned for not rolling away when I don't see how he could. Also did anyone see when Leinster were mauling up the pitch at the start of the 2nd half and the ref told them to use it when Leinster were clearly going forward.

Peel is running the show atm.

EDIT; Ah sweet as O'Kelly, get the bonus now!

JC 2K3

Haha! Gwan O'Kelly!

RuggieBear

\o/

dc69

RuggieBear wrote: »

\o/

?

RuggieBear

Jesus christ, Fitzgibbon doesn't know the rules. Breakdown was completely uncontested under his interpretations. Good to see Irish ref's are still going after Blaney...:rolleyes:

[Jackass]

Final Score
Llanelli 10 - 24 Leinster

More of the same in the second half, controlled slipped a little bit and also picked up two sin bins, overall you can't complain, great win in those conditions, probably should have gotten the bonus point, but the 4 points is grand!

Sets up a great game in 2 weeks!!

Roll on Munster!

RuggieBear

dc69 wrote: »

?

lol

barnesd

RuggieBear wrote: »

Jesus christ, Fitzgibbon doesn't know the rules. Breakdown was completely uncontested under his interpretations. Good to see Irish ref's are still going after Blaney...:rolleyes:

If I didn't know better I'd say the guy was a cheat. He tried to do absolutely everything to get Llanelli back in the game.

[Jackass]

I think it could be a case of trying too hard not to appear biased to his home nation, maybe makes 50/50 decisions go more the other way. He was shocking.

wixfjord

Fantastic performance there alrite. Nice to see a bit of pride in the jersey and an effective gameplan. Cullen and Heaslip are real leaders. Horgan got through a massive amount of work in the ruck. Definitely better than Sale and Gloucester......*hides eyes and waits for backlash*

RuggieBear

Illanelli were terrible this evening. I really thought they were a much better team than that.

Munster next who are a far far superior team than the scarlets...just depends on what team turns up and whether they are still in the ERC.

Funkstard

Bollocks forgot I'd read the score if I went through the thread. Oh well. Great to hear they won, no mean feat beating Llanelli away!

bleg

great performance and control by leinster, especially the forwards, breakdown was an absolute mess, ref didn't assert his authority at all.

gerry1958

barnesd wrote: »

If I didn't know better I'd say the guy was a cheat. He tried to do absolutely everything to get Llanelli back in the game.

This referee was a disgrace, he gave every marginal decision to LLanelli. Does he by any chance have Munster connections?

phog

4 points from this evening was a good result for Leinster - before the match I'd have gone for Llanelli to win but from the bits I saw it would have been an injustice for for Leinster to lose.

Overall it's all but impossible for them to be caught now - they must surely be the League Winners.

barnesd

gerry1958 wrote: »

This referee was a disgrace, he gave every marginal decision to LLanelli. Does he by any chance have Munster connections?

Connections!? He's from fuppin' Limerick, his home club is Thomond.

P_1

barnesd wrote: »

Connections!? He's from fuppin' Limerick, his home club is Thomond.

Ok thats a bloody disgrace. Wasn't the ref at Connaught Munster from Ulster too?

barnesd

I'm not sure to be honest, but it's standard practice to have an Irish ref in an all Irish game. Though (and I hope this continues) they did a ref-swap with the GP earlier in the season for Munster-Leinster, we got Barnes and they got Rolland or Lewis.

Kristopherus

barnesd wrote: »

If I didn't know better I'd say the guy was a cheat. He tried to do absolutely everything to get Llanelli back in the game.

Have to agree with above. He almost brought Llanelli back into the game on his own. A shameful performance

P_1

maybe they should look into this again. there were a few fairly questionable calls made by semi partisan refs over the last few matches.
maybe I should just get my tin foil hat and head off to conspiracy theories though :pac:

phog

There's a lot of negative comments about the ref, now I only saw the game in patches and didn't see anything that was blatant one sided but it will surely be repeated during the week - what should I look out for where he was so poor and could have cost you the game?

RuggieBear

WELL...let me start this by stating that I don't rate many refs and i'm very one eyed.

IMO Fitzgibbon did not allow the tackler to even attempt to rip the ball...he was calling ruck as soon as the tackles were made. Was quite annoying as heaslip and Jennings, in particular, were locking onto the ball, staying on their feet, before a third man joined but were not allowed take the ball away. He then gave a penalty against leinster for holding onto the ball 5 yards from our line which was completely at odds with how had ref'ed the breakdown previously...

Blaney was given no lee way whatsoever and was quickly carded for borderline calls imo. The issue here is that irish refs have had it in for Blaney since the Munster match back in 2006 when he allegedly accosted mcDowell at half time and was consequently cited by the ulster ref but the disciplinary case was thrown out as there was a lack of evidence. Other Irish refs then spent the next few months blowing Leinster off the park against the other provinces.

The Mighty Ken

It's not like the ML is on thin ice as it is. Unless they stop employing retarded refs then I'm going to stop watching it.