Leinster Team Talk Thread (Love you Furlong time)

I thought we lost a lot when Ngati went off. Not overly upset about the loss tho as we'll 5 point Connaught. Ryan played well on return as did Hugo.

Foley better option than Luke now but he was a solid performer in years gone by too so let's not **** all over him. It's the management that pick the team.

Losing these games is frustrating, but I don't think it's that big a deal in the long run either. We've a great 23/26 players who can beat anyone home or away.

I certainly wouldn't go talking down the victories over La Rochelle either. Especially the one in France. That was a massive deal.

Agreed! But..... I think in the past we win these matches. I feel like there's a drop off this year.

I think we'll do the double.

There's an attitude about this Leinster side I haven't seen before. We've always been shithouses that pushed the legality of our game to breaking point. But this season I've watched us playing spitefully and with more aggression.

Think we're sick of the losses in knockout games and just trying to get over the line any way possible.

We beat a significantly worse LAR team, 

They aren't the team they were last year but they're still fifth in the Top14 and they made a big deal about targeting our game… and we put 40 points on them. We put 47 points on an almost full-strength Bulls team, 60 on the Ospreys.

I don't think we're playing as well as last year either, but equally I think we're overstating the issues too.

Tonight was a very disappointing game but ultimately not a big deal in the context of next week. Ryan and Keenan got through 80 minutes, that's about the extent of what we learned. We were never going to able to have continuity going into the final, that's just the downside of being in both tournaments and being bulk supplier to Ireland.

I also completely disagree with the "that's the reality of being in both competitions" stuff. 

I think we got it wrong for the semi-final last year, but I'm not sure what else we could have done tonight, it would have been madness going full strength for a game that was a nice-to-win a week out from the CC final.

I don't think the lack of continuity is doing us any favours this year either.

Yeah, that's exactly my point? We're chopping and changing week to week because we have to, not because we're trying to be clever, and it's inevitable that there will be a trade-off in performance.

Chopping and changing has never been a problem before. In fact, the "b" side generally beat most sides. What's happening at the minute is strange. There's something not kosher.

What has changed? The opposition have improved.

We’ve lost to Glasgow in October, Ulster in January and Ulster in May. The trip to SA was meaningless because we had no intention of winning.

Trying to piece together patterns and meaning from three matches spread over eight months is futile in the extreme.

We’ll know where we stand at the end of our run in the URC, whenever that comes.

I think we could be looking at a home quarter and then a trip to Thomond. Munster will win their game easily enough, Bulls have Sharks after their final and the travel back and Glasgow should eat up the points difference and overtake us.