Leinster Team Talk Thread (Love you Furlong time)

Sounds like Roger Randle will no longer be joining Munster.

We like to complain about certain elements of our on pitch performance, but thank God we've had competent leadership at board level for the last 20 years. We've had a lot of success with coaching appointments, bar Matt O'Connor really. A triumph in continuity planning really.

What's happened to Munster post 2008 European Cup is a case study in what not to do with a sporting organisation. A string of failed coaching appointments, lack of player development which has now led to ordinary working staff facing redundancy.

I largely agree. The present coaching appointments aside.

The MOC appointment was on the face of it a good appointment.

He had a difficult standard to live up to and no Sexton to do it with.

Plus Rowntree won our first silverware in, what, 12, 13 years?

In those terms "A string of failed coaching appointments" doesn't really stack up to scutiny.

I agree the MOC appointment didn't look terrible at the time he was appointed; he looked an experienced and capable coach. He had an impossible act to follow in Joe Schmidt. The good thing was that it was recognised pretty quickly it wasn't working out and he was moved on.

The Jacques Nienaber appointment was even more so an incredible appointment on the face of it when it happened. He was a widely lauded coach who'd won 2 RWCs (1 at the time of the announcement). We'd lost two finals by extraordinarily tight margins, and the perception (rightly or wrongly) was we needed to import some of the hard edge mentality the Boks had in spades. The vast overwhelming majority of fans (me very much included) were very welcoming of the appointment.

It now looks like a mistake to me, and I'd welcome seeing him move on this summer, but it wasn't necessarily an obviously poor appointment or decision at the time it was made - like the way the Roger Randle appointment was an obvious egregiously stupid decision.

I'm not sure I'd describe fans as overly welcoming to Nienaber tbh, I was certainly against it as was most of the Leinster supporters I know.

"A string of failed coaching appointments" aside, ironically, Leinster may have benefitted from more coaching turnover, with Cullen broadly underachieving over the last decade.

I disagree with the analysis of Leinster being too slavish to the rush defence. If anything, I think we've moved away from how we've defended the last few seasons. I don't think we're as fast up as we were last season, nor do we attempt to 'barge' at an opposition ruck as frequently.

I don't know if Nienaber has done it as a purposeful move to focus more on attack, but whatever he's trying to implement it hasn't worked. We aren't clicking in attack, nor do we suffocate teams defensively like last season.

He'll most likely stay until the end of his contract and leave for South Africa before the World Cup, as we all expected. I can't see Leinster making much effort to keep him past that.

Leo is under contract for next year. If they want a replacement, they'd need to start looking now for 2027-28. Rugby coaches tend to fulfil their contracts.