Leinster Team Talk Thread (Love you Furlong time)

There's a very interesting soundbite from Murray Kinsella in today's Rugby Weekly podcast. He's been speaking to a member of the Leinster camp who says Leinster have completely changed how they view the league season.

Previously they strive to win every game and get as good a seeding as possible for the playoffs. Now they view the regular season as a warm up for those fixtures and aren't as gung ho about placing as highly as possible. Very Springbok mentality.

Will be sad to see Molony go but the need for the likes of him to bolster the squad is not as strong as it was in the past.

There are fewer games played during international windows and with the WC out of the way the top players should be back reasonably early into the season this coming year and they reassess what a world post Snyman looks like for when guys are away with the Lions.

Why? You don't win anything for topping the league after the regular season. They're still aiming to win the league. If you're clearly superior to everyone else during the regular season you're kind of showing your hand too early. Now they're aiming to peak when it matters most.

Doesn't sound like nonsense to me - seems like coaching 101 given their circumstances.

Ignoring all else, even from a pure player mentality perspective for this season it would make sense to frame it as a season long effort to the team, as they are learning so many new things.

You shouldnt/cant dump everything on them at once, you want them to build on what they're learning over the season with a goal of peaking by the knockouts.

This is even more important when the core of the squad wasn't there during preseason and missing a big chunk of time now - they're going to at times take steps back during the season and you want them not to get frustrated and to continue to be forward looking. You want them to be ok with making mistakes now if it helps them to be are ready later.

Their goal is still to win every game, it is just the messaging that is different.

Will be sad to see Molony leave, he’s a fantastic player. Mad he hasn’t been capped at all really.

Had heard he was going to Chicago with Nick McCarthy, Dave Kearney and Adam Byrne last summer. Obviously Byrne retired instead and Molony got the offer from Bath which will be a far better move for him personally. Think he’s good mates with McCarthy and Mark O’Keefe who’s already over there so it kind of made sense when it was mentioned but he’s far far too good for that American league.

Both so combative no surprise they pick up injuries.

Reminded of the phrase "availability is the best ability"

You'd worry about both their futures with Leinster

Molony's emergence as a quality player has coincided with the strongest options we've had at lock probably in our history. If he was playing a decade ago or was even in this form 5 years ago, he'd have been capped. He really has only hit his top levels in the last 2 years. We've very few cheap caps being handed out these days in the back five of the pack. Henderson, Ryan, Baird, McCarthy and Beirne is at a higher level than anything we've ever seen before. There's a two time Lion not making the 23 at the moment.

We haven't given out a new cap at lock in three years. Aside from those currently in the squad, if you look at guys capped in the 5 years prior to the 2021/22 season, we saw Wycherley, Kleyn, Treadwell, Roux, Holland and Dillane get debuts. I think Molony would be comfortably able to sit amongst most of that group.

Did we? That was the NZ summer tour, unless you're talking about the Maori games?

We gave Wycherley a cap in the summer of 2021 off the bench against USA.

He'd be lucky to get half of what he's currently on with Leinster in the states. Hell he could negotiate a serious pay cut with Leinster and still be earning more that he would in MLR.

A player of Molonys calibre would get picked up by another European team for a modest but not cheap salary in most places!

And as you said - far too good for the MLR for sure