Leinster Team Talk Thread (Love you Furlong time)

They need to address the structures that clearly have been lacking at the other provinces. Throwing money at it may not be good enough there has to be a concerted effort to bridge the gap, which requires the right people and vision to develop rugby in schools and areas that traditionally have had limited rugby

That's all well and good - but if we go down this route, then we face into the prospect of seeing more of our big players move overseas. It's a short career, and players will go for financial security to protect themselves.

Jean Kleyn, a guy who will turn 33 in August, got a 3-year deal out of Gloucester. He wouldn't have gotten that here - and so it's fully understandable why he's leaving.

It's easy to discuss this in the context of the handful of guys who now look undeserving of their CCs (and there will always be some of those), but the idea that our world class players would continue to accept that kind of short term volatility and injury risk to their earnings and not accept a bigger money offer elsewhere is naïve at best IMO.

I asked you a direct question and still haven't received a response; so here I go again:

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?

The IRFU were well run under David Nucifora - he put a lot of the systems in place and drove a hard line on things like NIQ recruitment which were major factors in leading to the significant uptick in the fortunes of the men's national team.

David Humphreys is a different story so far - he's brought in two major initiatives in his time in office:

• Cut the 7s programme - to save a relatively paltry c. €500k per annum - when just in recent seasons alone we've seen the benefit of guys like Zac Ward, Joshua Kenny etc come through as a development pathway (and the obvious benefits it gave to guys like Hugo Keenan, Robert Baloucoune, Jimmy O'Brien etc).
• Fundamentally change the payor model for CCs, to a system that weakens Leinster.

The jury is very much out on the success of his tenure.

Don't forget publicly announcing a ban on NIQ front rows that lasted a year if even.

I wonder what the rugby budget at Michael's or Blackrock is vs. that of CBC or PBC? Impossible to know for sure but I'd estimate it's higher at the former than the latter.

Leinster have a huge demographic and financial advantage over all 3 other provinces at school level. I can't see how that point can be argued against. Much of that financial advantage is via private means. And the IRFU has recognised this disparity and is attempting to address it for the betterment of Irish rugby. It's basically means testing for rugby development.

I got the below from Gemini to show the scale of the disparity.

For the 2025 Ireland U-18 Men's Schools National Camp squad, the provincial breakdown consisted of 36 total players heavily dominated by the eastern province: [1]

• Leinster: 18 players (50% of the squad)
• Munster: 10 players (28% of the squad)
• Ulster: 8 players (22% of the squad)
• Connacht: 0 players

Yeah, the rugby budget is almost certainly higher I'd argue, but, once again, I'd bet the disparity in budgets is quite a bit smaller than the disparity in player production.

Let's not for a second pretend the likes of CBC & PBC are operating shoe string operations either :

• CBC have a 7,000 sq metre synthetic turf pitch constructed to World Rugby standards, do pre-season rugby camps in Alicante or Portugal most years, have just announced the appointment of Johnny Holland - a highly regarded developing coach and former player as DoR etc.
• PBC have four pitches, an all-weather floodlit training area, state of the art gym and ice-baths, go on multiple overseas tours (including recently to the NextGen XV Comp in Salou), have had a number of big name coaches involved.

The notion that it's purely financial reasons for the disparity in player production is nonsense.

I got the below from Gemini to show the scale of the disparity.

For the 2025 Ireland U-18 Men's Schools National Camp squad, the provincial breakdown consisted of 36 total players heavily dominated by the eastern province: [1]

• Leinster: 18 players (50% of the squad)
• Munster: 10 players (28% of the squad)
• Ulster: 8 players (22% of the squad)
• Connacht: 0 players

This speaks more to my point than yours I feel - if this was the ratio and balance of elite player production, where Leinster produced c. 1 in 2 and Munster and Connacht 1 in 4 each, then no one would have a problem with it. The issue isn't at those underage levels like U-18's Schools, it's what happens historically at the next level where players aren't being developed properly and there was virtually no ethos of giving them opportunities.

a few inconvenient facts for you, though it's not really clear what argument you're trying to really make anyway, imho:

1. Cork City & Environs populations (all on Google AI)

Cork city has an official administrative population of 224,004, with the wider metropolitan area accommodating approximately 327,000 residents

2. County Cork population

The population of County Cork is 584,156, according to the Central Statistics Office (CSO) Census 2022. This figure reflects an 8% growth from 2016 and represents the second-most populous county in Ireland.Breakdown of the PopulationCork City: 224,004 CSO Census 2022Rest of County Cork (excluding city): 360,152 City PopulationAverage Age: 39.1 years CSO Census 2022

3. Rugby playing Schools in Limerick: Number of Limerick based schools listed in the 2025 SCT draw

Four not one.

https://www.munsterrugby.ie/domestic_news/pairings-confirmed-for-opening-rounds-of-munster-schools-boys-senior-and-junior-cups/

5. Total Number of Rugby playing Schools in Munster

https://www.munsterrugby.ie/domestic/rugby/schools-rugby/affiliated-schools/

I sincerely hope this helps you with some relevant facts

My second bullet point is based on the past three seasons:

This was the post I had back in Jan covering this:

And I've recently refreshed this season's numbers: Ulster 30.4%, Connacht 20.5%, Leinster 24.6% and Munster 12.5%.

Munster are a distant third over the totality of three seasons on this metric.

So, once again, I'll make the argument: Munster's poor outturn of international quality players in recent years is orders of magnitude more to do with the distinct lack of opportunities successive Munster management teams have given to young Munster players than Leinster having a higher share of central contracts at this point in time.

Do you disagree with that assertion?

I don't agree necessarily with the view that Leinster just simply have way more higher quality players at the point they come into the system - I think the bigger disparity is the extent of the improvements that happen after they come into the Academy system.

And despite claiming to be Ireland first and foremost, you're now deadset against it.

This isn't the case - it's that I have no faith or conviction that the changes being proposed will achieve a benefit for Ireland, but I'm absolutely certain it will serve to make Leinster weaker in the short term.

Neil Treacy By Neil Treacy

RTÉ Sport Journalist

Leinster have confirmed that loosehead prop Paddy McCarthy will miss the rest of the province's season with a foot injury, and the 22-year-old now looks like a doubt for Ireland’s Nations Championship campaign this summer...

Rushed back?

Very fair point, I'd argue though that the All Backs and Australia were also at a lower ebb compared to their normal standard before that. But maybe I'm wrong, and I'm not trying to detract from our achievements - you can only beat what's in front of you

Rushed back?

Depends on what the injury is doesn't it? I've seen people say it was the other foot than the one that kept him out, if it's a completely independent injury then no.

Munster might've had an NIQ prop at that rate, leaky…. imagine.

Which only further reinforces that the IRFU haven't arrived at this decision:

• to placate the moaning 
• or because of "gripes of the fans of the other provinces
• or because of "the screaming of Ulster and Munster fans"

They've arrived at it because they think it's the right decison.

Disagree whether you think it's the right decision or not by all means. But the notion put forward by others as to how they arrived at that decision is laughable.

It's because the two aren't necessarily connected.

There are been periods where the split of CCs has skewed more towards Munster.

It is realistically foreseeable, for me, than maybe 5 years for now if Ireland have c. 13 CCs that the split could be something like:

• Leinster - 4 (Sheehan, Doris, McCarthy, Clarkson)
• Munster - 2/3* - (Crowley, Edogbo, Casey)
• Ulster - 3/4* - (Ward, McNabney, Postlethwaite, Doak)
• Connacht - 2 (Bohan, Hurley Langton)

*likely one of either Casey or Doak

And if that happens - it will be nothing to do with this change now being considered (though it probably would be trumpeted as such) and will be much more to do with those provinces backing and developing those players.

But the changes happening to Leinster are happening right now, in real time, when we have our quasi-golden generation of players, and it will IMO weaken our ability to compete right now. That's why I'm frustrated.