Leinster Team Talk/Gossip/Rumours Thread IV

Just in reply to FL on the Connacht thread but thought its worth moving it here.

former legend wrote: »

Jesus. Move on lads.

If I was a Connacht fan, I'd be more worried about how my team managed to create so few chances for themselves. They were atrocious going forward, although they took the try nicely.

As a Leinster fan, I'm more worried about the utter lack of cohesion in the backs.

Either of those is far more deserving of discussion than the yellow card (non-)decision.

In fairness we never show the play book before the HEC and I doubt that changed under MOC.

I actually am not too worried about cohesion in the backs actually. I mean, to be realistic we are never going to hit the heights of back play we were used to seeing under Schmidt. Let's just be honest with our selves; we slipped into taking that backplay for guaranteed. The fact is Schmidt is probably one of the best attacks coach in Europe, if not the world. His obsession for perfection in the set play moves is not something you see in other coaches.

So with that in mind, how is our back play doing? I would say not bad, all things considered. We pretty much know in the first stages of the season MOC was more interested in integrating the defensive systems he wanted rather than backplay.

Now we've done pretty well in defence, the attack is starting to develop. In fact, we even look at the Connacht game, a game where the play book was probably kept pretty tight, we still saw glimpses of some nice set attacks. In the first half we were desperately close to developing some real quality moves. The issue for me, as Buer pointed out in the other thread, is our forwards just aren't dominating as they once did. We're nearly there though, and in the last two games we've shown we're interested in using a quick, power based attack at the ruck. When this has happened we made easy yards against ulster and Connacht.

The breakdown happened when we lost our accuracy, or when Madigan pushed the ball two early. We should be looking for at least 3 phases of good quality punching before spinning it.

In the 2nd half of the game we saw Kearney used a lot on inside ball. This was no accident, in the game before the double header we saw that a lot, Darce being used as first receive and popping the ball onto a strike runner on his inside shoulder. In the pro12 game before the HEC game it was Madigan, and he messed the timing up, but Kearney was on the money.

It was smart and tidy and won us some handy yards. I expect to see this a bit more against Castres but probably more intense with a few more dummy runs. It's an attack which guarantees plenty of support for clear outs so I'd be happy to see more of it. I much rather this kind of moves rather than just pushing the ball wide.

vienne86 wrote: »

Let's hope the heading here is correct:

http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/rugby/leinster-emerge-from-connacht-scrap-with-clean-bill-of-health-and-many-positives-1.1644989?page=1

No mention of Dundon, so hopefully he is OK.

Interesting pic for the D'arcy try. If I was judging it solely on this pic I'd say it was a backwards pass. D'Arcy is actually behind the tackler (look at the feet) and the ball is being passed backwards.

awec wrote: »

Impossible to tell from that angle to be honest.

Yeah that's it. Impossible to tell from any of the TV angles either really, so I suppose you can see why the TMO didn't call it.