Leinster Team Talk Thread (Love you Furlong time)

Agreed. I think the most irritating thing (for me) to read is the soccer mentality of "he's had a bad game, he needs to be dropped indefinitely". There's barely a world class player who hasn't made it to where they made it to without playing through adversity. If we dropped everyone who had a bad day today or any day, we wouldn't have a team. Not only that, rugby is such a team sport that ultimately an individuals performance can be entirely influenced by those around them.

I hope Sam gets plenty of time at 10 and I hope Crowley does as well. Alternating between them could be great but dropping either on the basis of a bad day at the races won't help them.

I'd be embarrassed to call myself an Irish rugby fan if I couldn't get behind players just because they don't wear my provincial colours. You can tell there's so many posters around these days who salivate every time Sam makes a mistake and it's just sad.

Anyways, onwards and upwards for him.

Fintan Gunne broke his wrist during the Ireland A game last weekend according to Murray Kinsella. That's a season ender you'd imagine.

Also leaves Leinster in bother wrt to the 9 jersey over the next few weeks. JGP won't travel to South Africa and Cormac Foley is still injured. We'll be down to our 5th choice scrum half. Whoever that actually is.

That's **** news, he was seeing some consistent game time finally

If anyone is "incensed" by a coaching decision, maybe rugby isn't for them.

Your question is more for the Ireland thread than here. The 6N campaigns this year and last year are not like-for-like, the individual games aren't even like-for-like so that argument of what went last year is irrelevant.

In any event does anyone have the head for yet another Sam v Crowley discussion...

Damn. That's awful news. South Africa would have been a great opportunity for him to get game time. Thank god Luke is having a purple patch this year.

They'll probably just take two scrumhalves to SA then - McGrath and Coffey, which sounds a bit risky until you remember Ireland took just two 9s to the 2019 World Cup. It's also probably a good bit easier for a non-scrumhalf to fill in there now with the law tweaks protecting scrumhalves. I guess Jimmy O'Brien could step in if necessary - unless one of the other outside backs likely to travel has an underage career as a scrumhalf I'm unaware of. I'd imagine Liam Turner would also be used to passing from the base from playing 7s.

It's bad luck for Gunne, but a real opportunity for Coffey, who looked reasonably promising off the bench against Cardiff.

Brilliant news if true. He's been a revelation and one of our best ever NIQs.

Leinster confirming that they'll be back in the RDS for the 26/27 season.

Regarding loyalty back to the RDS, they noted:

“Season Ticket Holders that were with us before the move to the Aviva Stadium will always be our priority and we’ve engaged a world-renowned consultancy to support us in that return to the RDS, and we will also look after those that have joined us this current season and into next year.

No half time minis for another year and a half so. Disappointing.

They have the brutal BOI sponsored kick-catch competition. Maybe its a sponsorship thing?

Last year's Leinster kit for sale on M&M Direct.

£25 for the jersey. Nice jersey looking back

https://www.mandmdirect.com/02/fts/?search=rugby+men

New contracts announced for John McKee and JOB.

Hugh Cooney moves from an academy deal to his first senior contract.

Harry Byrne's loan at Bristol has been extended until the end of the season. Seems to be going well for him over there.

HB has been delivering too. It's a good move for him, even for a couple of seasons.

With Ross gone be may come back as he'll get the game time to show what he can do. I'd rather they kept on with Tector at 12 as he's smashing it there.