Leinster Team Talk Thread (Love you Furlong time)

No story is been rewritten at all. Not by me anyway

Others seem to have invented a storyline of Prendergast been put into the team in front of others while they had no drop in form or not been injured etc

I agree, Cullen has made some strange decisions which have cost Leinster for a few seasons now, and I also believe Nieaber's "great defensive strategy" is totally over hyped and not worth anything, it has weakened Leister.

People have a different reality or even opinions when looking at the past and that's fine but even his most dedicated supporters/followers must agree thats he's had a poor 6 months. It's become the cult of Sam

I remember being on a Zoom call years ago with Leo and Stuart Lancaster discussing leadership, winning mentality etc. (I got the invite through corporate invites etc).

Anyway, one item that really stuck in my head was Leo saying how they had a specific way they wanted Leinster to play and he reckoned the worst thing to happen was that SA had won the 2019 RWC because other teams would copy that style of play. Fast forward to 2023 and SA retain the RWC and what happens? We appoint JN. A classic "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em"

We had a superb attack all those years under Lancaster and just didn't quite have that little extra to get over the line in Europe. They bring in JN but the tradeoff in terms of what was supposed to be a lethal defence has been more than nullified by a blunt attack and worrying dropoff in skills since Lancaster left.

Defences certainly win trophies at international level but Bordeaux won in Europe last year playing wonderful rugby.

For me there's always been a vision question w Leo. He inherited a very good team in a dip, dominated the URC for years but couldn't figure out how to get to the very top in Europe. Superficially it was a power problem with the likes of Skelton and LAR's pack (or Saracens' Wolfpack) getting the better of Leinster, but ultimately he moved away from Leinster's real strength which had been developed by Cheika and Joe, an extremely quick super fit passing team that played the kind of rugby France just won the 6N with. Years of being nearly rans and losing Lancs pushed Leo to embrace the way rugby was seemingly going via SA. But Leinster don't and won't have the kind of bodies to play that game, ever. Now they're between two stools, neither a slick space oriented team, nor a power team to overwhelm opponents. 4th, 5th, or 6th in any table of meaningful stats is unfortunately the consequence. The divergence with how Farrell has Ireland playing has also become quite pronounced. I'm not sure its Leo's fault, but a root an branch renovation won't do Leinster any harm.

”Dross”

A most excellent description

The refuse of smelting of precious metal

Leinster are smelting

Yeah, he looked slow when he broke the line and he made his pass very early.

Thats the truth.