Leinster V. N-G Dragons

irishbucsfan

Leinster: 15 Isa Nacewa, 14 Shane Horgan, 13 Fergus McFadden, 12 Shaun Berne, 11 David Kearney, 10 Jonathan Sexton, 9 Chris Keane, 8 Sean O'Brien, 7 Shane Jennings, 6 Kevin McLaughlin, 5 Devin Toner, 4 Leo Cullen (capt), 3 Mike Ross, 2 John Fogarty, 1 Cian Healy.
Replacements: 16 Jason Harris-Wright, 17 Stan Wright, 18 Nathan Hines, 19 Stephen Keogh, 20 Eoin Reddan, 21 Gordon D'Arcy, 22 Simon Keogh.

Dragons: 15 Martyn Thomas, 14 Aled Brew, 13 Tom Riley, 12 Ashley Smith, 11 Richard Fussell, 10 James Arlidge, 9 Wayne Evans, 8 tbc, 7 Grant Webb, 6 Gavin Thomas, 5 Luke Charteris (capt), 4 Robert Sidoli, 3 Nigel Hall, 2 Steve Jones, 1 Ali McKenzie.
Replacements: 16 Duane Goodfield, 17 Hugh Gustafson, 18 Gethin Robinson, 19 Adam Jones, 20 James Harris, 21 Jason Tovey, 22 Alex Walker.

Date: Saturday, September 12
Kick-off: 19:00 BST
Venue: RDS
Referee: Graham Knox (Scotland)
Assistant referees: David Wilkinson (Ireland), Jonathan Peak (Ireland)
Television match official: Tom Redmond (Ireland)
Assessor: Tom Aplin (Ireland)


Have to think they'll win this one. Nice to see Reddan on the bench, I think he'll be given 20 minutes to stretch his legs and arms. I'd like to see Mike Ross put down a big performance to announce his arrival. Dave Kearney on the wing will be interesting to see, although I'm not expecting much from him there. Sean O'Brien could smash the Dragons around a bit as well. [size=-1]First person to give out about Chris Keane's selection is a rotten egg[/size]

funky penguin

Call me a rotten egg! :pac:

Size=everything

I am extremely happy with this lineup.

Toner starting, Kevin McLaughlin kept on at 6 and Sean O'Brien at 8. I also can't wait to see how Dave Kearney does! It seems Cheika is really giving a chance to the youngsters.

buck65

5 pointer to Leinster I reckon. Dragons don't travel too well.

stephen_n

Really strong bench and glad to see reddan in it, would expect to see him Hines and Darcy make a showing at some point in the game. Can't understand the call at 9 but sure there you go I doubted Cheika before and the fecker won the HEC :pac::pac:

ALH-06

I'm surprised at O'Brien playing at 8 - is he really suitable for this position?

Digifriendly

Could they not have had a later KO time so that this doesn't clash with TV coverage of Ospreys vs Ulster game? Remember a few years ago Ulster vs Cardiff had a Friday night 9.00pm KO time because Ospreys vs Munster was also televised and was being played earlier in the evening.

anonymous_joe

Bollocks! Forgot to pick up tickets.

Really hope they still have some free.

sock puppet

Very strong pack out. Hopefully the backs perform a bit better with the first game under their belt.

irishbucsfan

ALH-06 wrote: »

I'm surprised at O'Brien playing at 8 - is he really suitable for this position?

I refer you to the Ireland A - Scotland A game from earlier this year.

ALH-06

irishbucsfan wrote: »

I refer you to the Ireland A - Scotland A game from earlier this year.

I didn't see that game? I've never seen O'Brien play at 8, hence the original question...

Pretty sure he played 8 in the under 20 grandslam aswell.

danthefan

The resident Dragons fan on PR said that Dragons are targetting the Glasgow game next week so not sure how much fight they'll have in them. Like the look of our team though, no less than 7 of the starters are youth players brought through under Cheika alone which is fantastic. Consider 3 more out as Lions and you see the job he's doing for Irish rugby.

ALH-06

danthefan wrote: »

The resident Dragons fan on PR said that Dragons are targetting the Glasgow game next week so not sure how much fight they'll have in them. Like the look of our team though, no less than 7 of the starters are youth players brought through under Cheika alone which is fantastic. Consider 3 more out as Lions and you see the job he's doing for Irish rugby.

+1

F~ck the Super 15!

anonymous_joe

Dire game. ><

Good to see a confident win, I mean the result was never really in doubt, but we looked fairly blunt up front.

irishbucsfan

SOB got man of the match. Good to hear.

15,000 spectators for a home game against the Dragons is a mighty fine attendance. Fair play! It'll be 15,001 when I get home next week!

RuggieBear

leinster were uneven. some great play and then real sloppy stuff. SOB and sexton were very good (although sexton has decided to try and add a terrible dummy to his repertoire which nobody bought anhd he kept getting nailed).
Our front row destroyed them and we should have had a few more penalties and scrums being turned over to us but the ref was lenient to the dragons.

Main thing i took away was that the dragons are much better than previously. They have some very limited players but they are very fit and they do the basics very well. I don't think they will be the bottom welsh team this year.

irishbucsfan

RuggieBear wrote: »

Main thing i took away was that the dragons are much better than previously. They have some very limited players but they are very fit and they do the basics very well. I don't think they will be the bottom welsh team this year.

Oooh bold statement. Bet you'd get good odds on that though.

RuggieBear

yeah that will probably bite me in the arse at the end of the campaign:D

Crash

Five minutes into the match I was astounded by the level of improvement by the Dragons - they've become a lot smarter, faster and clinical than previous seasons - Like Ruggie, I can see them not being bottom welsh this year alright.

anonymous_joe

Crash wrote: »

Five minutes into the match I was astounded by the level of improvement by the Dragons - they've become a lot smarter, faster and clinical than previous seasons - Like Ruggie, I can see them not being bottom welsh this year alright.

We lost to the Scarlets, beat the Dragons. I doubt they will overtake the Scarlets tbh.

What they've done is learned the simplest lesson - if you can't win, become hard to beat. They just play tight defensive rugby and don't give you any opportunities. Let's not forget we sent our kids over their at the tail end of last season and they lost poorly. They're one of the toughest teams to play not because they're good, but because they've learned to play in a way that negates their shíteness.

pisslips

Thats fair harsh for a bunch of proffesional players that would beat Shannon or Clontarf by about 60 points.

Aidric

Was Sexton binned in this game?

danthefan

Aidric wrote: »

Was Sexton binned in this game?

Think he might have been very late in the game.

CatFromHue

i think he was, it was in injury time and the game only went on for another minute at the most.
they had 2 guys binned as well.
anyone else think there was a case for crossing for the dragons try?

Eoin

Yep, he was binned with a few minutes to go.

Stev_o

I don't think iv ever seen another OH that gets binned as often as him.

Mr.Applepie

Stev_o wrote: »

I don't think iv ever seen another OH that gets binned as often as him.

He got binned for a ruck offence as far as I remember. More of a team sinbin

danthefan

Mr.Applepie wrote: »

He got binned for a ruck offence as far as I remember. More of a team sinbin

Was yeah. Same kind of thing when he got binned in the Churchill Cup.

anonymous_joe

pisslips wrote: »

Thats fair harsh for a bunch of proffesional players that would beat Shannon or Clontarf by about 60 points.

But that's because those are amateur teams.

pisslips

Yeah, sure but you called them "sh1te".

Which is a bit harsh seeing as they're probably within the top 1% of rugby players in the world.

Thats all i'm saying, they're hardly sh1te.

I tempted to say they're better than you but I don't know you and so I could end up with serious egg on my face.

I know it's a different level but come on, there's nothing worse than some ****er at your local match talking **** about you when you're out on the field playing when you make a mistake and they usually wouldn't have the guts to do it themselves. So it's twice as bad to do it to a proffessional player who has commited his life to the game. Fair enough, they lack imagination or pace or power but they are definitely not sh1te. Their props could probably play J1 outhalf!

anonymous_joe

pisslips wrote: »

Yeah, sure but you called them "sh1te".

Which is a bit harsh seeing as they're probably within the top 1% of rugby players in the world.

Thats all i'm saying, they're hardly sh1te.

I tempted to say they're better than you but I don't know you and so I could end up with serious egg on my face.

I know it's a different level but come on, there's nothing worse than some ****er at your local match talking **** about you when you're out on the field playing when you make a mistake and they usually wouldn't have the guts to do it themselves. So it's twice as bad to do it to a proffessional player who has commited his life to the game. Fair enough, they lack imagination or pace or power but they are definitely not sh1te. Their props could probably play J1 outhalf!

If I was better than the Dragons players I'd presumably be a pro. And would have been busy playing rather than watching the game.

Of course the Dragons are in the top 1% or so, less probably. Wales has around 20,000 rugby players. 1% would be 200. There are four pro teams, each with around 30 players. Maybe two thirds of whom are Welsh. Meaning that they're in the top 150 or so of the 20,000 Welsh players.

One of the best players in my year in school was let go by the Leinster Academy. He was miles better than me, miles better than most on here I'd guess, but he was nowhere near good enough to be a pro sadly.

I won't stop calling hte Dragons shíte, because they are, but not in a simple way. They're consistently the second-last team in the ML, but unlike Connacht have learned to play in such a way as to make the humiliating thrashings much rarer.

Anyway, shíte is a subjective term. I'm a United fan, and many of my ilk would describe John O'Shea as a bit shíte. He's probably the weakest of our starting 11 of last season. Despite that, he's probably in the world's top 100 right backs. Out of quite simply millions. I remember reading once there's something like a 100,000 pro footballers, and he'd be in the top 1000 or so.

The Dragons have some good players, of course they do, they're a pro team, but their a small region and just not as good as the likes of Leinster or Cardiff.

A big part of the problem is that we never get to see them play worse teams. Thus we only ever see them struggle. I quite rate the likes of Charteris, they've some half decent backs, and Tovey's highly rated, but in a direct comparison to Leinster, (for obvious reasons my barometer) they are shíte. Were we comparing them to say, Clontarf or Shannon, then of course they wouldn't be.

phog

CatFromHue wrote: »

i think he was, it was in injury time and the game only went on for another minute at the most.
they had 2 guys binned as well.
anyone else think there was a case for crossing for the dragons try?

Possibly, hard to see on the TV but the commnetators certainly took that view, what was very eveident on TV was the forward pass from D'Arcy in the lead up the Leinster try so I suppose both tries could have been disallowed and made no difference to the outcome of the game.

chupacabra

Missed the game, how did young Kearney and O'Brien do?

Aidric

Stev_o wrote: »

I don't think iv ever seen another OH that gets binned as often as him.

His discipline is a major headache. Fair enough in this game time was almost up but rest assured his indiscipline will prove very costly in games in the future.
It needs to be nipped in the bud before his considered for selection ahead of ROG imo.

danthefan

chupacabra wrote: »

Missed the game, how did young Kearney and O'Brien do?

Young Kearney didn't do badly at all, was quite solid and seems to have a fair bit of pace. Definitely encouraging for his first ever ML game. O'Brien was typically robust, couple of good carries and big hits, not sure how much he affected the breakdown though. Setanta gave him MotM.

Crash

Kearney was good, a few naive moments, but I'd give himself and Niall Morris a bit of space at the mo, they're allowed the odd one. SOB was good, but found himself in a number of spots where his handling off pop passes let him down, and hopefully its something he'll improve on. Not sure he was a standout for MotM, but in all fairness I can't think of anyone else who stood out enough to deserve it. Reddan shifted the backline a damnsight faster when he came on, so hopefully he can continue on from that.

funky penguin

Personally, I thought Nacewa was a MotM contender. Lions or no lions, Rob has his work cut out for him, he is an excellent full back.

r0nanf

Some decent kicking from Berne, but what surprised me was that he got beaten on the outside at least 3 times that I noticed. Against the Dragons.

buck65

The Dragons are tough enough to play away in Rodney Parade. I fancy them against Glasgow this week. Gave Ulster a bit of a beating too.
They have improved a good deal and were improving as last year wore on.