Leinster Team Talk Thread (Love you Furlong time)

OK? Point still stands.

You can’t blame selection! We had 100% of our best 23 out there today. Simple as. Barrett playing 50 from beginning v 30 at end is a rounding error. This was a let down by the players . Management not to blame .

Nonsense. We signed Barrett to be a difference maker and he was benched. He should have been out there for 80 minutes and not been held back until we were chasing the game. It's very difficult to make an impact when you're on the back foot.

Similarly what exactly did Healy give us in 20 minutes today? Boyle should have been there.

And in my opinion, Sam should have been pulled much much sooner. He had a howler today.

Just home from the match. I have lots of opinions and comments around it I can’t go into now (due to being half pissed and I’ll get banned), but that preference is not acceptable anymore at this stage of competitions. This is the best club team for a couple of years, and certainly this year on paper. I haven’t read any comments since Thursday here so I don’t know the general feel but that has to be the end of Leo Cullen. This can’t be accepted in my opinion. If he doesn’t have bollocks to hand in his notice on Tuesday it should done for him.

Not good enough today. We have built up a lot of these players as something they are not. Simple fact is that Leinster are not the best team in Europe.

Papers have allowed us to believe Conan, Ringrose and others are world class. Realization is now happening that they're not.

Will a URC win save Leo?

And to the surprise of absolutely no one, the serial chokers choke yet again 😂

Undercooked. Devastated

Blaming selection is rediculous. It’s saying that the difference in that game was Jordie Barrett being on and Henshaw being off for 20 minutes. Nonsense. The starting 15 were exceptional and it’s on the hunger & game management of the Saints / missed tackles & game mismanagement from Leinster that put us away. Coaches can’t play the game. Player accountability is where this lies. 2011 was the same in reverse. Player accountability won the game, Sexton leading the way. Tommy O’Brien showed up yesterday , others didn’t , won’t name as they’re torturing themselves and don’t need a tag. Gutted beyond words

No, I think it's absolutely fair to question the coaches on selection. They messed it up in last seasons final and did it again yesterday. In 2024 VDF should have started and in 2025 Barrett should have togged out at 12.

It's better if we leave off diagnosing this season's issues until it officially ends. There's still a trophy to be won. But selection policy must be brought up internally.

There's definitely a problem there with finishing off the business end of the season, but there's also the viewpoint that at least they're always in the mix at the business end of the season rather than choking at an earlier stage and leaving fans sitting at home the last few weekends with only other provincial colleagues to support. At the same time it's another year without an Irish team being the best in Europe which is getting worrying at this stage with potentially only one province left in Europe next year!

There are lots of things that sting about yesterday. Our defence being torn apart, our attack failing in the first half etc

But what I'm most disappointed by is that Leinster didn't learn their lesson from last seasons final. In that game we turned down so many opportunities to take 3 points and instead kicked for the corner. We then blew the try scoring opportunity and let Toulouse off the hook. Whereas they took opted to kick at goal whenever it was on offer

We had two opportunities to take points near the end of yesterday's game and didn't take them. Making one of those kicks would have brought the game into extra time where there was an excellent chance that we could have won. We had clawed back a 12 point deficit from HT and were finishing stronger.

It's not ridiculous. We signed Barrett for him to play in these games.

Then, when push came to shove, they didn't start him. And they played him for only 31 minutes in a Champions Cup semi-final.

That goes down as one of the worst selection decisions I've ever encountered. It brings into question why we even signed Barrett in the first place. He's not some squad filler - he's one of the best players in the world and we had him on the bench for a Champions Cup semi final.

I don't know why you think there is no blame to be cast there. He was our best player for the 31 minutes he was on the pitch. He absolutely should have started that game every day of the week and twice on Sundays.

That’s a terrible analogy really. Mayo lost a lot of finals but bar the 2021 final with Tyrone you’d be going back a long, long way to find one they played in that they weren’t huge outsiders to win. In basically all of those finals Mayo played way above themselves to bring the Dubs within a point or 2 and on some occasions to replays. Those Mayo teams reserved their best performances for the biggest days and made those games far more competitive than they should have been on paper.

This Leinster team is the opposite. They clearly have one of if not the best team in Europe, they get to cherry pick the best players from the countries that win the world cups every time and yet year after year they play way below themselves on the biggest days and lose to teams they should be easily beating.

They were 1/25 yesterday to win that match and failed to do it. If the final whistle was blown and Mayo were going up the steps of the Hogan stand to collect Sam Maguire they still wouldn’t be as short 1/25!

your hurting bud. That’s understandable. Time is a great healer.

But it’s simply true that the Irish centres as they currently stand will not in any way be good enough for the RWC in 2027