URC Week 13

Yeah, I'm really getting fed up with the criticism of Prendergast, tbh. People are expecting him to singlehandedly pull rabbits out of a hat and drag the performance of the rest of the team up. It's rare any player can do that, let alone at his age.

For Leinster tonight, and for his last few Ireland games, he's been playing behind packs that were not giving him front foot ball or pulling their weight in attack. Like, what do people expect of him if the forwards are going backwards, or being lazy or static when they do get to attack?

He absolutely needs to work on his tackling and his place kicking, but I think the abuse he's gotten, and continues to get, is vastly disproportionate to his faults, and unfortunately, you can see it's affected him.

Also agree that I'm not sure he suits Neinaber-ball. Having a second playmaker, whether that's an in-form JGP or Frawley/Osbourne at 12 makes a big difference. The way the team is set up, opposition can aggressively focus on him...when there's a second option it's harder to smother our attack by just shutting him down.

Tl:dr; he wasn't great this evening, but as with Ireland, he was not really the problem.

No, he was not THE problem with how we were playing. Crowley would have sucked just as hard if he started against France. The problems in the rest of the team actually, imo, magnified Prendergast's weaknesses. We have no idea what happened in camp or what the conversation was between Farrell and Prendergast, but I don't think he's been unceremoniously discarded. I think his confidence is shot based on how things went for him in an underperforming team. JGP probably deserved more flak as a senior player for his form in the second half of 2025 and the start of the 6N than Prendergast.