Caelan Doris, if you had to choose a player that has sparkled this year, would be among the top picks with Josh van der Flier and Jack Conan. Recently he has been in the wars a little, took some time out for a head injury. But when he's playing his athletic, ball-carrying game there are few to compare with the Leinster and Ireland backrow.
There are a few smarting lines on his head today with a trip to Montpellier on Thursday, but Doris is not about to allow some stitches to impede full involvement in the south of France. Covid-19 permitting, as usual.
“I was pretty unlucky too, back to back, the scrum cap came off against Connacht for about three minutes,” he says. “I got an elbow and then a scrape. So that was very unlucky and then it was on the other side somehow managed to go through the scrum cap.
“But (I’m) grand, my head was a bit bloody, nothing major, a few stitches, it’s hidden behind the hair for the moment anyway, for a few more years.”
As ever with a team that expects the level of performance to go up against the French giants, while the 45-21 win against Bath last week was the statement-making start, there is still a Leinster carcass to pick over and find some parts that need to be cleaned up.
“I thought we sort of struggled to get into our flow a little bit, not sticking to systems, maybe going off ourselves and forcing a few offloads,” says Doris. “Obviously it was a good result, we were happy with the five points but we know we’re going to need to be a lot better, even on Friday, and with teams to come in the future.
“With the levels we want to get to and the aspirations that we have around winning silverware, we’re going to need to be a lot better. Bath have probably struggled quite a bit so far this year. Even though the score line is quite flattering in our favour, it probably wasn’t our most impressive performance at all.”
This will go down as another disrupted EPCR Champions Cup week. But Leinster perhaps have some advantage that the players coming back from the Irish set up extend to almost their entire team.
The Irish DNA is not so dissimilar to that of Leinster and as the team spent the month of November in each other’s company, the testing and re-jigged training days may not be as distracting as it otherwise might.
For the final game against Argentina in November, the original starting lineup before injuries forced changes had 11 of the 15 players from Leinster. Just Robert Balacoune, Joey Carbey, Conor Murray and Iain Henderson were from other provinces.
Up to speed
“There are more similarities than differences in how we’re playing, between the two teams, more now than probably in the past anyway,” says Doris. “Definitely. It’s still about getting up to speed with the language again, those nuances around making taking it to the edge a little bit more in attack or obviously slightly different styles of playing so it can take a while.
“Even though it’s similar personnel, the style of play . . . it is a little bit different so there are bits around that but the way we train is so multi-phased and unstructured that it sets us up perfectly to get into our flow and into our systems quickly.”
The players have been kept out of the Covid debate as much as possible. But with such rigorous testing and isolation, it is difficult to treat the week as a normal run in. With news changing by the day in Montpellier as well it is, as a twist in the old adage goes, not trying to control the uncontrollables.
“They are kind of protecting us from that, letting us get on with our preparations as best as possible,” explains Doris. “So I mean the week has already changed in having yesterday (Monday) off and whether we are training tomorrow or not is a little bit uncertain still. Waiting on test results and stuff like that so yeah it’s still a pretty dynamic situation but just trying to get on as best as possible.”
