Leinster look good for the weekend against Northampton in the semi-finals of the Champions Cup. RG Snyman is back fit, while Ryan Baird had no reaction to his injury when he played against Scarlets at the weekend in the United Rugby Championship. James Ryan won’t make it back in time but Leinster’s second defeat of the season in Wales on Saturday, well, that may not be such a terrible thing.
It will be a different team that faces the Premiership side to the one that lined out in Parc Y Scarlets, so the dynamics will significantly change. The international players are available, with Snyman and perhaps Jordie Barrett in the squad as Leinster prepare for a repeat of last year’s penultimate stage.
While Leinster were perplexed with the disconnected performance and result with Scarlets, assistant coach Robin McBryde believes the loss has “put everybody back on their toes”.
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“You think you’ve covered all bases ... after a performance like that there’s lessons for everybody,” he said. “The first thing we did was look at ourselves as coaches, with regards to how we prepared the team and what didn’t we get right.
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“In the long run, hopefully we can reap the benefit of that shot across the bows and make sure everybody doesn’t get ahead of themselves, that they’ve got everything where it should be for this weekend.”
What may concern the frontrow, most likely Andrew Porter, Dan Sheehan and Tadhg Furlong, is that the referee for the game at the Aviva Stadium is Frenchman Pierre Brousset. Once the youngest referee in the Top 14, Brousset caused Leinster to do some head scratching in the way he managed the scrum when they played against both Bristol and Harlequins.
Despite Harlequins losing 62-0 at Croke Park in the Round of 16 match, Leinster lost nine of the 11 scrums awarded in that game.
“We had a conversation after the Bristol game because it wasn’t a great advert for rugby and for scrums,” said McBryde.
“We had a good conversation after that one, against Quins as well ... Rabah’s [Slimani] fallen foul of some of his decisions and in all of the other games during the year Rabah’s proved a good weapon for us from a scrummaging point of view.
“We just need to make sure we’re seeing the same pictures as Pierre is seeing.”
Slimani, along with Barrett and Snyman, have combined to make a tremendous impact since they arrived as Leinster’s overseas players.
Snyman’s offloads and lineout work and Barrett’s ability to help the team play have been pivotal in Leinster’s success so far. For Springbok Snyman and All Black Barrett, their World Cup medals and big Test match experience should prove invaluable.
“[Snyman] is a big-game player, all three of them really, they bring that level of experience with them, that level of composure, and in your interviews with RG I’m sure you’ve seen he’s so easy to talk to,” said McBryde.
“He talks to you as coaches the same as he would with a fellow player, so those connections are very easy to make and that benefits the whole environment. We’ve seen the benefit that the youngsters get from being alongside them, playing with them and training with them, bouncing ideas off each other.
“I’m not saying that untruthfully or anything, I’m being 100 per cent genuine. A lot of these players will be better for having the experience of playing alongside them, the IP [Intellectual Property] that they’ve got, all of these players.”
