Leinster Team Talk Thread (Love you Furlong time)

Interestingly I think Leinster have 2 of those 3 things covered with Baird and Porter. Baird has been unlucky with his injury and Porter could be developed to prop both sides as he already converted from TH to LH.

As for the 10 situation, Byrne, Carbery and Prendergast will by vying for that jersey next season. Leinster won't be investing further in that area.

No, and I'm not necessarily arguing that this change of model will be immediately detrimental to the national team.

But, equally, there is very little evidence or argument that this change will be beneficial to the national team.

It is inarguable that it is detrimental to Leinster and the quality of squad it puts together going forward.

I'm of the view that the failure of Ulster & Munster to develop enough players of sufficient quality over the past 15 years or so has next to nothing to do with how central contracts are awarded; and far more with how those provinces identify, coach and give opportunities to young players.

Get those things right, and you produce more players who can earn central contracts (guys like Bryn Ward, Jude Postlethwaite, etc).

The ironic thing about this is that Ulster directly saw the effects this season of being asked to produce a lot more players for the national team.

5-6 players played meaningful minutes in the 6N and what happened? Robert Baloucoune missed virtually the entire rest of the season because of an injury sustained playing for Ireland; Stu McCloskey missed important games because of mandatory rest periods etc, and some of the other players looked a bit more tired and spent because of the exertion of being asked to compete on another front. Those are exactly the reasons why you want the benefit of the central contracts. You get rewarded for developing guys who go on to earn them, and the outcome of that is it frees up some funds to invest in your wider squad to help make up for the minutes those front line players miss either through mandated rest or injury.

The ironic thing is that if Ulster, Connacht and Munster go on to produce a lot more internationals over the coming seasons and guys worthy of CCs, then you won't get the full benefit of that.

C'mon, that angle is disingenuous and is ignorant of the underlying demographics.

Leinster's success is built on the private school model where teenage boys are exclusively playing rugby from 13 and are being coached to near professional levels. It is all funded through the school fees and generous donations from alumni etc. A huge proportion of the island's population resides in the greater Dublin area and and even bigger proportion of the nation's wealth resides there too. That's what has fuelled the development of so many high quality players for the Leinster academy.

And yes, Leinster have managed their academy well too. After years of mismanaging it in the noughties.

You can't compare this to my own province of Munster for example. Cork and Limerick simply do not have the population to compete with Dublin. And GAA has a far bigger stronghold in our cities and especially the surrounding hinterland. The same scale of affluence and private schooling doesn't exist either. Connacht is an even more extreme case of this, far more sparsely populated again and also GAA centric.

Ulster is the outlier, Belfast is perhaps the one city that could compete size wise with Dublin. And has the schooling system focused on rugby. But again, there's a caveat. The schools are segregated based on religion and the Catholic schools are GAA focused. Too much history going on there.

To ignore these facts is disingenuous. It's akin to a wealthy person complaining about being taxed to support social housing.

I think the argument for the change is quite obvious - additional investment in player pathways in Connacht, Munster, and Ulster will increase the size of the national playing pool and help to address the enormous concentration risk arising from the proportion of internationals emerging from a small number of schools. Of course, with absolutely no information on the nature or scope of this investment, it will be very hard to assess its efficacy. I would also question why there is seemingly no allocation of funding to Leinster clubs or B schools.

Personally, I don't see compelling evidence (yet) of the impact on Leinster. Their squad is extremely strong and they have had two high profile NIQs in the squad in the two seasons since the funding changes were implemented. I know there have been some player losses but there are other factors which have contributed to the changes in squad composition across the provinces, primarily the reduction in the number of games per season. The biggest loss to date was probably Ciaran Frawley but as far as I know Leinster offered him a contract which Connacht wouldn't be able to beat, so I'm not seeing that as a downstream effect of budgetary changes.

I definitely don't expect Leinster fans to be happy about the new funding model, but unfortunately that's the nature of supporting a branch of a larger organisation. You are always subject to the vagaries of head office, that's the nature of the beast.

The below quote from Jackman from this article https://www.the42.ie/leo-cullen-leinster-podcast-7050948-May2026/ grabbed my attention.

“There’s been loads of time given I think. Apparently the next model for Leinster, there’s not going to be a Leo, as such. Apparently the succession planning is there won’t be a Leo, a Guy [Easterby, Chief Operating Officer], and a senior coach, as such. That’s certainly the rumour around."

It suggests they know who'll be taking over when Cullen's contract ends in 2027. I'm thinking Contepomi is possibly the most likely to have agreed a timeline like that, unless they're looking at Bleyendaal taking the reins? Presumably Nienaber will head back to SA.

This is all predicated on the notion that the players arrive out of school as fully formed pro rugby players, and that the Academy plays no subsequent role in the development of those players. It ignores the fact the characteristics you're describing:

• Leinster's extensive schools system (which is in reality, a handful of schools - i.e. there is essentially the same number of students in Blackrock & Michaels combined as there is in PBC & CBC combined).
• The larger population base in Dublin
• The wealth disparity towards Dublin
• The supposed bigger prevalence of GAA in Munster counties (noting that over the c. 15 year period we've been discussing Dublin had the most successful gaelic football team in the history of the sport, and hurling in Dublin has grown enormously in popularity in recent years)

have all been the case virtually throughout Irish rugby history, but the skewed player development stats have really accelerated in the past 15 years.

What about the fact that Munster have the poorest track record (by far) of actually giving opportunities to young players in recent years?

I don't dispute your point that the concentration risk of player production from a tiny handful of schools is absolutely a live concern for the IRFU - I just don't see how this model change will materially change that.

You could have decided to ringfence some funding into player pathways in the other three provinces from a variety of different mechanisms - it didn't need to be via the change to the CC model, and that's the point I keep making and people seem unwilling to engage with.

The impact of the change to the CC model is more to do with ceding to the gripes of the fans of the other provinces and bringing down Leinster.

You say you don't see the impact - but this August is when the system comes into effect, and we're absolutely seeing the impact on how our squad is shaping up for next season. We'll have 1 NIQ it looks like on our books next season.

The 5 main guys who are going (Luke McGrath, Will Connors, Rabah Slimani, Rieko Ioane & Ciaran Frawley) - who have an average age btw of 31 - have accounted for c. 7,600 minutes for Leinster over the past two seasons, and there is nothing really coming in to replace them. That number increases to c. 9,054 mins over the past two seasons if as expected James Lowe moves on.

At scrum half - we'll have a 23-year-old as our #2, behind a soon to be 35-year-old who is Ireland's #1 and will miss a lot of mins.

At THP - we'll have a 21-year-old and a 22-year old vying to be #3 THP, but in a scenario with the first two guys will miss a lot of time because of Irish squad involvement.

That's where the impact of this change will be felt. It won't improve anything for Ireland in the medium term, it won't weaken anything for Ireland in the medium term, but it will weaken Leinster; all to placate the moaning in reality.

This is only true if you believe it's possible for the levy to be 0%.

It's obviously not 0%.

The reality is the 40% is a counter-weight against an imbalance in the system that was never intended. And was wholly necessary.

No, I don't have them.

The trend in the past 3 seasons though has been clear and obvious - and I suspect if you looked over the past decade the trend would be the same.

Genuine question - which factor has a bigger impact on Munster's ability to produce players of sufficient standard to warrant international selection and potential winning CCs in time between these two issues:

• Leinster having a 10:1 ratio of Central Contracts at this moment in time, or
• Munster giving (by far) the lowest proportion of minutes to young players, the least minutes to Academy players, the least caps to Academy players, the least starts to Academy players and the lowest number of Academy players utilised?

It's clear to virtually anyone which of those two factors is infinitely more influential on the player development stats for the provinces, but, bizarrely that's not the adjustment that is being made to supposedly rectify this issue.

I think for me part of the issue with the central contracts has been the length of them and how they are given out…3 years on a central contract, they should be max 2 years…look what happened with stockdale, got central contract, injured, never been the same player since. Players then also have one good season and get a central contract…lets be honest, club sides in France and England are not lining up to take Irish players..they have their own to chose from. Henshaw and Aki should never have been extended and the likes of ringrose should now be on a 1 year contract that can be reviewed annually if necessary. Its tying in players for 2-3 years that hurts us with this model.

There are plenty of private schools, but the vast majority actually aren't producing players to any great extent. The vast majority are coming from Blackrock & Michaels - two schools with a direct comparable enrolment base (c. 1,705 for Rock & Michaels versus 1,635 for PBC & CBC) to the two largest Cork schools, yet the two Dublin schools are producing almost 20% of all pro rugby players in the country over the past 5 years or so.

What about the fact that this has largely always been the case too? You've been entirely silent on that point.

The disparity in player production is vastly greater than the disparity in population.

It would depend on whether Lowe is asking for a reasonable contract or not. If he's asking for two years, for example, then I can see why Leinster wouldn't come to an agreement. Surely Leinster wants him for one year only. That would be a reason not to resign him without anyone doing anything wrong.