Leinster Team Talk Thread (Love you Furlong time)

That’s more a square than a blank. 😉

Best dad joke I've seen in quite a while 👍️

Paddy McCarthy and Will Connors have returned to full training this week having recovered from injury and will be available for selection once more.

 

Ryan Baird will be further assessed for a calf injury and RG Snyman will be further assessed following a dead leg against Ulster, with a final decision to be made on their involvement later this week.

 

There are no further updates on Jordan Larmour, Rob Russell and James Ryan.

https://www.leinsterrugby.ie/2025/04/22/will-connors-and-paddy-mccarthy-return-to-full-training-as-leo-cullen-issues-injury-update/

Wouldn't have said Snyman would be playing this fixture anyway.

Season essentially written off for Larmour at this stage. And all very smoke and mirrors about what his issue is. He picked up an injury in training in January and hasn't been fit since. Hasn't played in 2025. Hope he's ok.

I've read crazier things on boards.ie to be honest...

Big weekend coming up in the URC. Depending on the results Leinster could secure top spot. They go to Scarlets and Glasgow host the Bulls.

Victories for Leinster and the Bulls guarantees a top spot for the former. We're most likely sending out a heavily rotated 23, but I'd still be relatively confident of a victory. Glasgow are probably favourites to win their game too, but are still injury hit and look to be in poor form.

I agree. Interestingly, if you read back through this thread over the first half of the season, it was just an awful lot of misery and joylessness.

One of the podcasts (I can't remember which, I listen to a lot of them) was listing out differences between this season a last season and they boiled down to:

Much improved defence & general coaching, Snyman, Barrett, Slimani, TOB seeming like a new signing for the run-in, improvement at 10 compared to last season, and just the general vibe where every player seems fully bought in and is enjoying themselves, all adding up to give this feeling of being a lot better than last season.

The attack finally feels to be clicking a little bit more. Obviously Bleyendaals system was going to take a little bit of time to bed in but we're seeing the benefits of it more now.

The attack last season under Goodman was a bit underwhelming.

And the start of this season I don't feel we were clicking going forward as much with basic errors and sloppy disconnects.

I'm definitely more optimistic anyway

TOB has been great but you're half just waiting for him to break down again.

Solid team. Boyle and Slimani I like on the bench to put pressure on their scrum in the second half.