Postlethwaite has replaced Aki in the squad.
Aki was losing it at the referee and touch judge last weekend. That behaviour needs to be curbed and it's only right he won't be part of the squad for now.
Postlethwaite comes in as Aki's replacement.
Is Aki being cited for something at the weekend?
no loss at this stage of his career
When I refer to “rush back” I don’t mean it in the literal term. Firstly make sure they are fit and performing in training.
If that’s the case then bring them back in, if they aren’t quite ready yet than give them time.
Loads of people here saying they'd rush people back and some saying the Ireland camp is responsible for injuries.
If they rush people back that gives credence to the accusation that they are responsible for injuries.
You don't ever rush a player back. If the doctor clears him you are still better off giving him a couple of more weeks off.
it was always going to be 6/2, has been the last two times we played France.
“It’s understood that Aki is not with Ireland at their pre-Six Nations training camp due to a disciplinary matter arising from Connacht’s clash with Leinster last weekend.”
Good to see he’s improved his discipline from the autumn anyway. Keep him as far away from the Irish 23 as possible, it’s hard enough winning in Paris without Aki's cheap and avoidable penalties screwing us further and then chuckling about afterwards like it’s no big deal.
Jaysus. 6-2 split incoming I'd say.
Another one out it looks like.
Us not knowing if Osborne is fit and the Irish coaches knowing are two very different things
They see the players in training and have all the data, if they believe he’s fit and good to go then that’s all that matters.
Frawley has looked very good but this is test level, looking really good for Leinster there and Ireland are very different. An away game in Paris is NOT where you throw in Frawley.
That's in pretty bad taste considering the nature of his retirement.
I would too. He’s not the same level but Osborne has played this season and twice at 15 for Ireland, it’s not that comparable.
It’s far from ideal but if they believe Osborne is good to go I’d start him.
This. Your post is literally two posts below one saying Antonio has had to retire. Imagine if that was Furlong.
Not sure if Osborne is even fit?
Would be good to get a look at Stockdale, and in fairness to Frawley he looks much improved at FB compared to two months ago, so no need to rush Osborne back at all.
I'd rush Keenan back in and start him despite having no gametime (as we had expected to happen prior to this injury rumour), but I don't think Osborne is at the level where I'd do that.
I'd start Stockdale in the 15 shirt if Keenan is out.
If the Keenan new’s is confirmed, I don’t see how a broken hand or something that serious could be confirmed so quickly so we’ll wait and see, I don’t think we’ll necessarily be weekend too badly with Osborne at 15. It also helps us with deploying a 6/2 split on the bench as at least now we have 13 covers. If Keenan was played there would likely be no cover at 13 as I doubt Osborne would start over Lowe/TOB.
Meanwhile looseheads everywhere
There's a perception bias here too.
Irish player gets injured, it's a big impact on either his province, the national team or both, so it registers with us.
Random English dude gets injured, we likely don't even hear about it and if we do, we don't care.
France and La Rochelle tighthead prop Uini Atonio forced to retire after ‘cardiac event’ Sad news
Sad news for French rugby and for Antonio
If it was a load of soft tissue injuries constantly (and there are select players here and there who do have this issue, but not enough to generate conspiracy theories IMO) I think there'd be something to do this, but this injury is allegedly a broken hand (following an extended spell off for hip surgery). You could break your hand in virtually any level of rugby.
Most of Leinster's long term injuries this year (Ryan Baird, Paddy McCarthy, Jack Boyle, Caelan Doris last year) are all contact injuries happening in games.
The only silver lining of this current injury list is that it will be a good test of squad depth. This is what cost us in RWC 2015, too many injuries accumulated in the group stages and the replacements not being up to standard. At least now we can judge the standard of the replacements 18 months out from RWC 2027.
At least not his hip and he’ll be able to continue to work on his cardio.
Rumour I heard was broken hand, which would have pretty much nothing to do with S&C or training. Same of Boyle and his achilles etc
Sometimes you just get **** luck.
I am that’s why I’m not going to go in with both feet until we actually hear something, I do find the fact they only trained yesterday and the fact we are already hearing a prognosis makes me think A. It’s a very bad injury or B. It’s fake.
It does have to be said one way or the other that this isn’t a one off, throughout the season the amount of players that are pulling out late in matches & being ruled out of games seems to be far higher than usual. I get rugby is a physical sport but it’s not any more/less physical than last season yet the injuries are pilling up in ways they haven’t before.
There is. We keep talking about “being unlucky” and things like that but the truth is, if there is a pattern emerging than realistically it can’t be down to luck, there is clearly something being done wrong on the conditioning/medic side of things that’s causing these injuries.
I noticed this even in the last 6N and during the Lions tour, if there was even the slightest doubt that a player would miss a game…they missed that game, there was no chance of a recovery or a player would pull through. By contrast in the big game versus France last year, every big player that was any doubt for France ended up pulling through and being available for selection.
If there is a deeper issue here than we really are going into big games like next Thursday with 1 hand tied behind our back.
I think there’s a broader discussion to be had about the injury-proneness of Irish rugby players in general. So many Irish players seem to just constantly get injured.
If this rumour is true…
Maybe wait till the actual injury is confirmed and we have some measure of detail on it before kicking all of Leinster & Ireland’s conditioning and training regime.
If this rumour is true, and judging from Leinster/Ireland’s luck with these sort of rumours it probably is, then Leinster & Ireland need to have a serious look at both their level of conditioning and their training regime.
There are just too many players getting injured, almost as if every week it’s guaranteed that another 2-3 players will be on the sidelines. Injuries are part of rugby of course but they seem to be having a far greater at Leinster this season than I can remember from previous seasons or even compared to our rivals.
It also would put a mockers on the Leinster strategy of “managing Keenan’s load” if he then can’t even make it through a training session without picking up a serious injury, so all the workload management was a waste.
