Leinster Team Talk Thread (Love you Furlong time)

Sams clearly a shite tackler …… but its his unwillingness to put his body on the line for his team mates that pissed me off the most. Ringrose misses plenty of tackles but he dives head first like a bullet into everything.

Sam sticks his hands out and tries to grab players instead of hitting them with his shoulder because hes afraid to get hurt. I wouldnt mind if he was just only a bad tackler but being unwilling to put your head where it hurts for your teammates is unacceptable.

I'm torn, in a way, I can't believe it's been so long since Leinster won the champions cup / Heineken cup. But how far they've gone every year is extremely impressive.

Both extremely puerile and extremely false. He gets no critical coverage? What are you talking about?

Lots of really good aspects of today’s performance.

Pack were substantially better. Our scrum dominated (and they should have probably had a yellow after 5 penalties conceded).

Our lineout was 100%. Our restarts were all 100%. Doris’ carrying into contact was immense, Josh had a big game before departing, Porter was excellent.

I'm actually sick of teams being so unprepared for these situations. It's a bloody kick a 12 year old could nail yet we've not one adult on the pitch that can do it? The acceptance of this crap in rugby annoys me. Every player should have basic skills including kicking regardless of the number of your back. To not have a single backup in the 15 on the pitch is shocking.

100% on Sam. His tackling and positioning was awful. Liked the look of him but not up to this level today.

Another gripe is the non opening of the bars at the end, as usual in the Aviva, which could facilitate a relaxed exodus... And the bizzare decision to close off exiting by the dodder and having thousands of people walk through a residential area instead.

At 29 v 11 this should have been a waltz thereafter. Poor game management. Will have to watch it back when I'm home

My defense was not on Cullen as a coach. It was on his response to a nonsense question/comment by a reporter. I won’t speak for people but I’d imagine many are the same.

Irish sports journalists are dirt in my opinion. They live to create issues and problems. Listen to them on podcasts, it’s very rare they say a positive thing without it following a “but”.

I agree with your general comment about it not being good enough since Cullen has been in charge, but he is spot on to call out journalist negativity for what it is.

That summarises my views of him too.

I’ve been hugely critical of Cullen and the coaches for a long time. We’ve left trophies behind us and I don’t think these windows are open forever. Equally - for Nienaber, who I’ve been hugely critical of, he deserves credit as our defence was largely excellent today (well for the first 65 mins or so until Sam was introduced).

But absolutely agreed on the criticism of Irish rugby journalism; which is by and large shite. A handful of notable exceptions, but some of them are genuinely awful.

Nah, there has been a steady stream of criticism since they lost the first final v La Rochelle, and he got enormous criticism in 2023 when he picked a second string side and threw away the URC semi v Munster and then bottled a big lead in the European final v La Rochelle again.

Part of the most frustrating thing about how the Irish media cover Leinster in the last 5 years or so is that they their successes are dismissed as “So what? They’ve got the best squad etc etc” and their defeats are overblown to enormous levels.

I’m not saying he wasn’t facing legitimate criticism a lot of the time too; I’ve been calling for him to be gone since we lost the URC semi in Pretoria the year Glasgow won it.

But a lot of the Irish rugby journalism is just bullshit muck spreading and rumour lingering too; so would understand why Cullen isn’t a fan of a lot of the press corps.

Why can't you just write 'you' ?

Leinster are now in 5 out of 8 finals since their last win which shows a massive consistency and obliterates every other team who has come in and out of form. Toulon when they had nothing to lose were dangerously close to famous comeback. Bench selection is a real debate now as we were exposed with Sam outside of his natural habitat. Forwards were immense, Porter & Clarkson leading the charge, and Rieko to me was player of the match as he saved 14 points in defence !! Bilbao 2026