Leinster Team Talk Thread (Love you Furlong time)

I for one would jump on harry byrne at this low point in his value. I really like him. He gets hurt a tad too much maybe but it is rugby, guys get hurt.

I don’t really see the match between frawley and munster. Tector doesn’t really fit there either.

Is Conor Fitzgerald retired? They just need someone late twenties who is solid and cheap by 10 standards. Maybe not cheap but Hanrahan would have fit.

Rowntree and Prendergast are professionals with aspirations. They would never play crowley over a better player.

Carbery had endless opportunities at munster and for ireland.

Ian Keatley definitely wouldn't be one of them though.

Yeah, that's the case with all of the provinces. Munster are still the sole example though I can think of of an Irish team booing one of their own players. There has absolutely 100% been a tendency from some of the more rabid online based fans to turn on imports, especially Leinster imports, a bit more quickly than other players too.

I know it wasn't a large segment of fans who booed Keatley, but calling it overblown isn't accurate.

There are all quotes from Keatley about how it affected him:

The worst thing was talking to mom on the phone a day or two later, she broke down crying. I said, 'Look mom, it's fine, these things happen, I'll bounce back'.

It's so personal. People will tell you it's alright; deep down as a player you know yourself it's not. It's especially tough when you are trying your hardest. I got tweets saying, 'Is Keatley not practising his place-kicking', obviously I couldn't work harder in training but people don't see the hours, weeks, months and years that you put in. They just see you having bad moments in a game and judge you on that.

I wasn't cracking jokes anymore; I wasn't listening to music, I love listening to music. In the car, on the way in to training I'd have my radio off, I was constantly thinking. Weird things go through your head; I wondered, 'Why am I putting myself through this?'.

It's the sole example of booing, but Carbery has come in for some fairly harsh words from Munster fans in recent times too.

A whole host of fans who lauded RG Snyman for years were extremely quick to turn on him and abuse him too.

I'm not going so far as to suggest Munster fans don't welcome non-Munster players, and obviously there's a whole glut of the fanbase only too happy to keep cherrypicking players from Leinster et al where possible, but I don't think the original point was outrageous that if, for example, Harry Byrne, moved to Munster this summer and started outplaying and getting selected ahead of Jack Crowley next season, that that would be brilliantly received by sections of the Munster fanbase.

He'd really quickly IMO become a scapegoat for any problems that happen down there.

Calling in reinforcements! 😉