Leinster Team Talk Thread (Love you Furlong time)

The excuse merchants for Nienaber and Cullen are now blaming the players.

Yes - I'm partly blaming the players. The coaches have made some serious balls-ups too, of course they have.

But the players have to accept some responsibility here, they're the ones going out on the pitch after all.

Your problem is you're simplifying everything to binary; it must be the coaches or the players, it cannot be both, and if Nienaber and Cullen are bad, Lancaster must have been great. All the finals we lost under Lancaster have simply gone down the memory hole.

The reality is that whatever is holding us is back from winning Europe is complicated and the solutions are a lot more complicated than sacking the coaches.

Some of those are longer term absences. They're still a really formidable side on paper, and will name a strong team this weekend:

Starting props will be Jean-Baptiste Gros (started all five games for France in the 6N at LHP) and former Lion Kyle Sinckler at THP. They also have Georgian prop Beka Gigashvili coming off the bench at THP.

They, like us, look to be struggling a bit at lock, with all of Rebbadj, Ribbans, Alainu'uese and occasionally Ollivon playing there. They've got really good players in the back row - an the 19-year-old Georgian No 8 Mikheili Shioshvili looks like a real prospect.

They have excellent players in the back line - two top tier scrum halves in Ben White & Baptiste Serin, two very capable 10s in Tomas Albornoz and Paolo Garbisi, Nacho Brex and maybe Ma'a Nonu in the centres and then Jaminet at full back, with the absolutely electric Gael Drean on the wing.

We 100% shouldn't underestimate this team. They've had a poor season domestically but they have a lot of talent and don't realistically have a lot to play for.

Nothing like a loss to sharpen the mind, in the end of the day it will be a disaster if we lose on Saturday for the players and the coaches. I am expecting a very focused team. Toulon will be strong but home advantage should swing it. It is a must win for the fans.

Connacht's pack this season has been relatively inexperienced at prop - they've gotten really good mins in Bohan and Illo - but they have dynamic athletes who bring good physicality. At the heart of the win against the Stormers was the back row - Cian Prendergast was superb, and Sean Jansen and Shamus Hurley Langton are amongst the most physical carriers and defenders in Irish rugby this season.

We have been hamstrung at times this season with our lack of depth in the second row. We were fortunate last season after losing Ross Molony as all three of James Ryan, Joe McCarthy and RG Snyman (three guys with relatively patchy injury track records) all were substantially available. We have no depth to speak of behind them though.

I don't disagree they're a poorly coached team, and I desperately want to see the back of the whole coaching ticket at this point, but I'm not a believer that any coaches could turn Brian Deeny into the player we need him to be.

No, I don't think it is that simple.

I'm critical of the coaches for not being able to inspire the players to produce consistently, and without a doubt we looked flat and like we were going through the motions last Saturday night in Treviso, but the players absolutely deserve criticism for that too, and Dan Sheehan said as much after the win against Sale.

Furlong has been poor for so long for us, I don't know if it's really a loss. Clarkson is by far our strongest THP now IMO, he's been scrummaging well, carrying really well and offers the most around the park. I'd back Slimani to give us 20 good minutes off the bench too. I'm far more concerned about getting James Ryan & Joe McCarthy on the field than Tadhg Furlong.

I think what really sticks in my throat is, as mentioned above, how the likes of Sheehan said they need to hold themselves accountable and drive standards.

We've also been critical of players being rested ahead of matches like the semi and, for once, Leo picks a very strong team and they produce a very slack, error-ridden performance. Kinda flies in the face of the point of fielding a strong team when it looks like they've got an eye on the following weekend. 🤷

I don't even think it's that - it's that the key decision makers around Cullen's tenure are the IRFU, and as far as they're concerned he's doing a pretty much perfect job.

All they are concerned with is the production of players for the national team.

McCarthy looks to be moving freely in the training photos:

He's wearing lifting blocks too, which suggests he's training fully.

I'm not sure on dropping Lowe straight back in; I'm torn between Jimmy O'Brien or Rieko Ioane for the left wing. I think I'm plump for Jimmy O'Brien's defensive solidity given he'll be up against the incredible pace of Gael Drean.

Andrew Porter is the big concern still. Ed Byrne can't play in Europe, so if Porter & Furlong are both ruled out our 4 match day props will be: Jerry Cahir & Rabah Slimani on the LHP side and Tom Clarkson & Andrew Sparrow on the THP side.

I don't even think we have anyone healthy behind those guys for 24th man etc. Niall Smyth is reportedly still injured; only other prop we have is Alex Mullan.

“The team are playing sh1te because of the coaches. Not because of the players!”

This makes no sense at all to me. Clearly matches are won and lost by the combined coaching & player input. Crazy to say otherwise as matches are won and lost in moments. Like JGP missing a relatively straight forward tackle up against the try line. Or Harry missing kicks that were only a week before cutting the posts. There’s 13 points in a 3 point game. Add in a forward pass on a try scored and it’s 20 points potentially. Reverse those 3 situations, we win handsomely and then the narrative is a world apart. 2 easily won malls cost us 14 points, 3 penalties cost us 6, that’s on coaching staff AND players.

He hasn't played there at all it would seem since a couple of games (incidentally one of them a win against Toulon) back in the 2020/21 system, but I would just hope he's got the technical scrummaging experience and ability to do a job there in a break glass situation.

No word on this. Hoping for more announcements this week. Think we have three big ones outstanding: Lowe, Keenan and Kelleher.

God dammit