Leinster Team Talk Thread (Love you Furlong time)

For 20 years Leo has been a big part of Leinster's success, he has enough credit in the bank to paper over the failures. He's very much involved from the ground-up, seen him at club matches and at club events seems to know everyone.

When was this tried in the Aviva?

Banning booze completely would be totally different, I don't think anyone would be in favour of that.

I've been to a few games with casual fans in Croke Park and they didn't drink that much less than they do at the Aviva - they just skulled pints before the game, and at half time. So the revenue impact wouldn't be huge.

Given the relative attendances of Croke Park to the Aviva for games over the last couple of years I'd also very much doubt that you'd lose 30% of the gate over it. Especially considering Croke Park is objectively worse all-round for games, and in a worse location for a lot of the fanbase, yet even with all of that and the booze difference the crowds didn't dip by anywhere near that.

I also think the quick throw by JGP, which resulted in Ioane's try, was a bit over looked. Leinster and Ireland rarely take quick throws. I think they benefit from being so we'll structured and drilled because everyone knows what they're doing, but they lack spontaneity. That was a rare example of a quick throw by Leinster and it paid off. This is an example of making your own luck

I think Piardi is very much in the mould of getting the game to flow. What I also like about him is his decisiveness in making decisions. Any time he went to the TMO, he had made a decision and was asking for clarity. Stark contrast to Dickson and Carley.

He also doesn't talk incessantly during the match and laid down the law very early on when a Bulls player started moaning at him. All in all, a very capable performance and one we rarely see from refs nowadays.

I don't agree. When a scrum goes backwards and collapses, the ref tends to give a penalty agaisnt the team going backwards.

Leinster often went backwards and sometimes the scrum collapsed, but they didn't concede penalties. That's against the general norm.

I agree they did very well considering the loose head options. I don't dispute that. But I think it wouldn't have been unusual if they had conceded a few more scrum penalties.

It's not knocking the team when we acknowledge getting some lucky ref decisions. We complain about it when we get bad luck with decisions.

I’m usually apprehensive at scrum time when an Irish team plays South African or top French opposition. We are rarely clearly dominant - let’s put it that way for a start - and I’ve often seen scrums where we ‘got away with it’. The best way to analyze this would be to go through each scrum and assess them individually.

In fairness, Piardi didn't have to deal with the joke that is Ian "Tempo" Tempest in the final.

He was on the Premiership final and as usual it was a s hi t show going back many phases for foul play. Then heading off to mk early cup of tea and rejoin 5 minutes behind play.

I just wanted to hop on….. and say congrats to Leinster, a wonderful season that the other provinces would love to have for sure.

I was so impressed and happy for Sam. A great performance, after a bad mid season for him. I just don't get the vitriol he gets exposed to. You can really see what a quality player he is.

I think it was such an interesting season for Leinster. The early SA tour was a brilliant idea. Leinster didn't play as fantastically well as previous years. Rather than blasting through all games, they had to figure things out and win ugly etc. I think this set them up well for the end of the season. A few things went their way, home advantage for most of the Euros and URC really helps.

But it really was an incredible season for Leinster, when you think of the post Lions season, a lot of injuries, a lot of media scrutiny, and maybe losing more games than normal. Most impressive of all has been the LHP situation, well done to Alex and Jerry for stepping up and playing a crucial part!

Surely after 2 years back to back URC, Leo can go all in for the HEC again next season. This really is the missing piece, and as the squad ages, might it be the last season for success? Where is the final on? Could it be brought back home to the Aviva again to help Leinster get over the line?