Leinster Team Talk Thread (Love you Furlong time)

I think so too, but maybe it's a 1 year thing while they wait and see how Boyle & McCarthy recover from injury.

Porter's minutes will be managed going into a RWC, and Jack Boyle could be out till 2027 with an achilles injury.

I'd still rather see Paddy McCarthy & Alex Usanov get the vast bulk of minutes though in that scenario than Dooley, who is an inferior player to Cahir IMO.

Really? I actually think the exact opposite - I wouldn't really mind the guy back who went across, but think he's kind of done at the top level now. I'm saying that more as a reflection on just aging than respective coaching fwiw.

No one is expecting him to come in and by as dynamic as Paddy McCarthy or Jack Boyle, but the level he should be better than tbh is what Jerry Cahir delivered for us this year. I can't think of a bad game Cahir played for us. From a brilliant starting debut against Zebre (with a try), to a phenomenal 38 mins off the bench against a gargantuan LAR pack (his tackling in that game was excellent), lots of good URC performances, a superb 77 mins off the bench against Sale in Europe and a couple of decent cameos against a good Toulon scrum on Saturday (including helping win a scrum pen at half time when we were massively under the cosh) - he's been so much more than we could have hoped he would be.

Delighted for him he's got an opportunity to continue his career as a pro, and wish him all the best out west.

Hope I'm wrong on Dooley - but haven't seen much to suggest otherwise.

I always find it hard to judge whether a player moving to Connacht has improved or not. He went from playing in a very good leinster team, to playing in a pretty poor connacht team. He hasn't been part of the connacht revival in the second half of this season so can't judge him on that.

I wouldn't be surprised if he looks pretty good again playing in a leinster pack.

It might make sense if they just want him for a year to cover Boyle's recovery. Cahir would have been better, but rumour is leinster offered him 1 year contract and connacht offered him a 2 year contract so he took it.

New central contract until 2028 for Hugo Keenan.

I'm thinking it might be best to put out a second string this weekend v the Lions, and then go pretty much full strength against the Ospreys to tune up for Bilbao. Maybe stronger in the backline than forwards against the Lions so players can get into a rhythm in attack.

What about Soroka and Deeny together in the second row this weekend to audition for the bench role against Bordeaux? It makes me think it would be better in future to keep an NIQ slot up their sleeve to be used for a medical joker if necessary. Imagine if they could have brought in a Brad Thorn-like signing in the second row with Snyman and Baird unavailable. Instead, those slots have been largely wasted on Slimani and Ioane. Ioane was good at the weekend by most accounts, but Jimmy O'Brien and Joshua Kenny are fit and available, and Lowe is nearly back.

There's a lot of incentive to go relatively strong on Saturday, given it's effectively a 10 pointer as we're on the same points difference.

Lions have been the prototypical Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde team this year - pretty irresistible at home, where the only team to have beaten them in the URC all season in Johannesburg is the Bulls, who are also accustomed to playing at altitude. They've ran up big scores against Ulster (49 points), Lyon (in Europe - 42 points), Edinburgh (54 points), Dragons (42 points), Glasgow (54 points) etc, and abjectly bad on the road.

They haven't won on the road outside of South Africa, and have lost to some pretty average teams (incl Zebre and Newcastle in Europe). They haven't played outside SA since Jan.

They've shown good form in recent weeks, but all at altitude.

I dunno what sort of side we'll put out, and have to imagine any knocks from the weekend absolutely won't be risked, but think we should have something like:

Jimmy O'Brien, Josh Kenny, Rieko Ioane, Jamie Osborne, James Lowe, Harry Byrne, Luke McGrath, Andrew Porter, Ronan Kelleher, Rabah Slimani, Conor O'Tighearnaigh, Brian Deeny, Alex Soroka, Scott Penny, Max Deegan

Reps: Gus McCarthy, Ed Byrne, Andrew Sparrow, James Culhane, Will Connors, Fintan Gunne, Ciaran Frawley, Charlie Tector

That team should be able to get it done, no?

I would be inclined to keep Porter, Ryan, McCarthy and Doris away from action this and next week, bar McCarthy who I would have on the bench Vs Ospreys to keep sharp for 15/20 minutes at the end. There is no real cover for most of them now and all are too important to risk. Porter, Ryan and Doris have no issue coming straight in after 2 weeks off. McCarthy can be slower to get going so would involve him vs Ospreys.

Would go strong outside of the above. Not sure what happens at 10 this week but I don't think we see Prendergast after the Ospreys game (if at all even vs Lions/Ospreys). A big summer for him to try improve a pretty massive hole in his game.

I watched the Bath semi and honestly it's hard to conclude that Bordeaux are world beaters. Bath made so many mistakes and bad decisions that handed Bordeaux easy entries and scores, Russell was MIA for most of the match, and in fairness to all the whinging about refs and TMOs, they were robbed of penalties and cards on a couple of occasions. Bordeaux's pack are good and they have players like Lucu and BB but Bath really were orddinary.

Thing about Bordeaux is the talent they have in the backline means they can score from anywhere at just about any time. Hell any of Jalibert, Penaud or LBB can do that themselves. Thought their defence was very dogged as well, lot of goalline stands and they controlled the last 20 or so when it mattered.

Having said that, Bath will have a lot of regrets. A few things going differently and they could have won it.