Leinster Team Talk Thread (Love you Furlong time)

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

Ringrose might be good enough, I'm not sure any of the others will be though.

Yea ringrose will only be 32 but there are a lot of miles on that clock, his defeanse is very good but let’s be honest he isn’t making line breaks like he was years ago.

The Barrett non-selection is obviously the biggest talking point, but starting Cian Healy deserves to be discussed as well. He has played better than I thought he was capable of at this stage if his career, but it's clear that he offers little in the more open games. He was so poor yesterday in a game where we needed impact and physicality.

Jack Boyle is still very inexperienced, but has performed well whenever called upon for province and country. And was one of the few Leinster players to perform well against Scarlets last weekend. He needs to be given all the minutes that would have went to Healy over the next few weeks. He offers a lot more in the carry and in defence now.

Jack Boyle put his hand up last week and said pick me, I'm a guy who will run through brick walls when things aren't going our way. He was our best player on the pitch last week and he played less than a half. I really can't understand how we have managed that lad this year.

Instead we picked Cian Healy because of Experience. We may aswell have been fielding a centre partnership of O'Driscoll and D'arcy for the first 20 minutes.

Pendergast has no pace, can't tackle and makes very few line breaks. He great kicker and good passer. But you cant learn pace. He very slow. And when he bulks up he be even slower

Milne showed in One game for Munster more than Healy has shown in 24 months.

you have to give youth its opportunity in rugby.

Find the next pollock instead of donating caps to players that should be long retired

I wanted to add as well that imho they need to start sending the 1st team on these South African tours. There are simply not enough challenging fixtures prior to the 1/4's or 1/2's for the starters and the SA tests are just that.

The team that played and won in SA this season probably would have done as good a job yesterday.