This week’s wrap pod was probably our shortest ever, so much so that I added a sample of the bonus chat to the end to give it a few extra minutes. I still think myself & Hugo covered the win in Leicester pretty comprehensively, though I think in future I’ll aim to go a bit longer. The pods were pushing an hour last season, which was too much, but I think under 30m is going too far in the other direction. Takes a while to bed in a new system I guess, although I can’t believe this was the THIRTEETH Sunday night recording of the season already – have we really been going for a quarter of a year???
Thorinho doesn’t think he’s the first to discover the format flaws in the comp is he? Fans have been railing on it for years now, as have I been, well, I suppose you could say “defending it” though that’s not quite the case. I think it would be better to say that my problems with it seem to be different to everyone else’s.
I really don’t get the whole fixation with “being easy to qualify for the knockouts” which appears to be the biggest bugbear. While I do agree that 24 teams are too many (especially when the team finishing 3 from bottom of the Premiership gets in) the fact that you can lose one match and still reach the round of 16 isn’t as ridiculous to me as it is to some.
Because should you qualify this way, you will face an away challenge in that Round of 16 to a team that has probably won all their matches, and thus you will either not go any further, or you can produce a headline making result.
The Round of 16 has replaced rounds 5 & 6 of the pool stages under the old method, which to my mind was equally ridiculous and when there were only 8 qualifiers out of 24 or 20, teams selecting weaker sides was still an issue.
Where the problem lies for me is the fact that the competition is scattered throughout the season in blocks. Two matches here, two there, with domestic matches in between, plus of course the massive Six Nations-sized gap where it’s possible for clubs to go into the knockout stages with a very different squad to that which contested the pools.
I have always argued on these pages that rugby tournaments should be played in one block no matter what the format, and what the Northern Hemisphere season does is force coaches to choose between competitions when it comes to selecting their squad, and frankly I can’t blame them when they more often than not prioritize qualification for next year’s Champions Cup over success in this year’s.
To be fair, I would still be in favour of reducing the amount of teams, but I also have sympathy with the EPCR over the small amount of dates available for the pool stages. Since COVID the Premiership & 🔝🐱🐴 seem reluctant to give the two dates back so assuming the Champions Cup absolutely MUST make do with just 4 rounds, my proposed changes would be a reduction to 18 clubs as well as something I can’t believe I’m suggesting.
One of my biggest pet peeves with the rugby blazers has been an over-reliance on copying what football does and expecting it to be as lucrative. Just look what they did to rebrand the Heineken Cup, making it look almost identical to the Champions League with a similar logo and even playing an “anthem” before matches. Most crucially they tried to mimic the sponsorship model in the hope that it would attract multiple sponsors when instead they can barely get one for the main event and can’t seem to get any corporate interest at all in the Challenge Cup.
But for me the one thing from soccer they could borrow is a recent change to a “Swiss model” of pool stage, namely one big league table for all the clubs as opposed to separate pools. This takes away a glitch found last year in a pool which included Bordeaux and Toulouse, as well as one that could possibly happen again in Leinster’s pool along with the Stormers, whereby a team can win all their matches yet still fall outside the top 4 seeds. IMO this is a much more “ridiculous” outcome than one win scraping you into a likely Round of 16 tonking.
There could also be a realignment of prize money making mere qualification for the competition less lucrative and offering more for reaching the final eight, putting more jeopardy on the round of 16 assuming there has to be one.
12 December 2025; Jamison Gibson-Park of Leinster scores his side’s first try during the Investec Champions Cup match between Leicester Tigers and Leinster at Mattioli Woods Welford Road in Leicester, England. Photo by Brendan Moran/Sportsfile
The more I think on that performance, the more I reckon the 1% is right.
The previous big obvious things (scrum, lineout, discipline) are more or less fixed, certainly improved.
Outside of that we’re getting into the right patterns and areas both sides of the ball, pretty much, but then… it falls apart. The reason differs. Sometimes it’s ruck resourcing. Sometimes it’s ball placement. Sometimes it’s offence or defence position or role confusion. Sometimes it’s accuracy/execution.
None of them feel like they’d be a massive issue to fix by themselves. But they’re all happening in every match like a random failure generator.
It needs fixing, and quick.
Darach Kennedy
An away win in Welford road. I’ll take that. Someone else can try and gather up some negatives.
Greg Kelly
Leinsters poor attack and sloppy execution continues. You wonder what’s really going on. We were the better team overall and they never really looked like scoring in the second half but our attack was woefully sloppy.
Irish rugby should be concerned overall with the loose head situation. Regardless of what happens referees seem to think we are weak there. There were some real garbage calls against McCarthy in the first half but as with Porter there is a perception.
Christy O’Connor
Another poor performance overall with some good individual performances. So many poor passes and spilled balls. At least our lineout was the best I’ve seen in a good while.
Doris needs to be careful moaning at the ref so much, the hit on Conan was a rugby incident and nothing more.
Our defense is not going to be good enough when we come up against better teams
Kevin Kelehan
Very happy that despite conceding two really well taken tries against the run of play the lads kept their belief and upped their work rate. The coming six weeks will make or break Leinster’s season, Ulster, Munster, Connacht, La Rochelle and Bayonne. Great to be heading into that run knowing that when the opportunity for players to go missing, they refused to take it.
Odran John OBrien
Brilliant win away from home but the Leinster attack is simply awful
anyone have Isa’s number? We could all do a whip around to persuade him to come back and coach
Chris McDonnell
If we could only put the straps Robbie henshaw has on his accordion on to a rugby ball, he might not drop the ball as much.
Craig Grehan
Win is a win. Grafted that one out
Tom Fingleton
Look at all the stats from tonight and the try return from the dominance . Tells you all really
Richard Collumb
4 points away, despite playing at times like they only met each other in the dressing room.
Eamon Saunders
Not a great team performance but again some very good individuals
Lorcán Murphy
The good news is they’re getting gritty away wins playing poorly with injury disruption. Can only get better
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your own thoughts each week after the full time whistle
Hi there, welcome to Broken Play, aka my Saturday morning Substack scribbling, and since you’re here, if you haven’t already, please hit the subscribe button if you don’t mind.
As promised last week, the Christmas decorations are now up in the Pagano household, and I have even resorted to AI to festivize the logo for the time of year that’s in it.
Speaking of AI, I’m afraid I have to hang my head in shame when it comes to our latest preview show on YouTube. When I talk of producing content I often joke about having a “Harpin’ Legal Department” or “Harpin’ Graphic Department” assuming most people know my tongue is firmly in my cheek as I type. The reality is that apart from my excellent group of contributors who join me on pods and take part in our WhatsApp group, the different hats are generally worn by my good salf.
Which means I have come to resort to AI more and more for research to save time, and sadly the same ways AI photos often come out with 6 or 7 fingers on each hand, the data I ask for can be wildly inaccurate.
The Preview show follows a specific template each week, and one mini segment involves looking at the other matches in the round of the weekend for the tournament Leinster or Ireland are playing in that weekend. When it’s Champions Cup time, I do try to include all the Irish provinces which means I have to also keep tabs on the Challenge Cup.
So when setting up the graphic for the video, rather than go to the official Challenge Cup site like I should have done, I relied on AI to provide me with the list of games and for some reason I was told Ulster were playing against the Dragons while Connacht were playing the Cheetahs.
Both were totally wrong, their opponents were in fact Cardiff and Black Lion respectively, and it’s way too late to fix it. I only noticed there was egg on my fac when I was researching for my weekly Dublin FM slot and it dawned on me that Connacht couldn’t possibly be playing away from home two weeks in a row.
I like to think that our Harpin’ group of contributors is a good mix for the podcast.
For the past couple of years I have had two guests per “wrap pod” but this year I trimmed it down to one not only to allow the guest a higher percentage of the time to harp, but also to allow myself to join the conversation more.
We now have a panel of 9 to choose from, with Keego exclusively doing the preview shows (although Mark Jackson’s Premiership insights have seen him step in both last week and this) and the others taking part in a voluntary rotation of sorts.
And by a “mix” I mean a combination of those who currently coach rugby and thus can offer more tactical knowledge, and out and out fans who have followed Leinster & Ireland for years and love to share their thoughts.
On Sunday I was joined by one of the coaches mentioned above, Tom Coleman who looks after the Balbriggan Women’s team and has also helped out with Leinster. In our wrap of the Harlequins match he offered a great analysis of the style of attack the province is trying to bring this season under Tyler Bleyendaal.
Having studied opinions on Leinster Rugby for almost two decades I notice some interesting patterns. There is a realm with a narrative that tends to be negative no matter how well the team is doing, and when we do VERY well, they would go silent altogether, only to re-emerge again the next time the form takes a dip.
Last season was a classic example. Leinster won virtually every match apart from their South African trip before getting ambushed by the Northampton Saints, and when that happened all the “Cullen out” brigade came spilling out of the woodwork, before seeming to retreat “Homer into the bushes” style when the team recovered to win the URC title.
It seems that may not be just a Leinster thing. Munster got off to a flying start this season culminating in an ambush of their own on us at Croker. 5 wins out of 5 suggested Clayton McMillan’s arrival was paying dividends from the off, and when they scored 3 first half tries against the also-100% Stormers at Thomond Park, it really looked as though they’d be unblemished going into Europe.
But since that second half kicked off, things haven’t gone quite so well, and all it has taken is that 40 minutes plus a humbling against their old boss Johann van Graan in Bath to bring about an article like this one.
Don’t get me wrong – I have nothing against criticism of the province. Only this weekend I defended the commenters on our Facebook page who were mostly going negative about the display against Leinster after I got a comment which led to this exchange…
Things took a bit of a dark turn from there – I have redacted his name for this page but if you want to see the full exchange it’s here.
Anyway, my point is that while I wouldn’t go as far as to censor any opinions I considered overly negative, a bit like that commenter I wouldn’t fully understand it. And in the case of this article about Munster’s defeat in Bath, for the most part I can appreciate where the author is coming from, until the very end where it seems like he almost forgets to blame the whole thing on the “IRFU blazers” and their supposed pro-Leinster bias.
“Welcome to our latest bonus chat, if you missed our podcast looking back at Leinster v Harlequins be sure to check it out on Apple, Spotify and all the other usual places. I was joined on the pod by Tom Coleman who’s last appearance was way back on September 21st, right before Leinster’s season kicked off in Cape Town so I thought this was a perfect opportunity to give an overview of Leinster’s season so far – well Tom, after 6 rounds of the URC and 1 game into the latest quest for that 5th star, how have we been doing?”
6 December 2025; Jordan Larmour of Leinster scores his side’s third try during the Investec Champions Cup match between Leinster and Harlequins at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin. Photo by Brendan Moran/Sportsfile
Positives first, some great individual performances from Lamour, Frawley and O’Brien I thought their work both on and off the ball was brilliant, they showed a real hunger in their game. Tommy’s quick thinking to chip the ball through when he had no space and Prendergasts cross field kicks for Lamours try was great to watch.
Negatives (I’ll try keep it short) discipline again was very poor, Quinn’s 2nd 3rd and 4th try came from our poor discipline. Ringrose made some great ground and Paddy Mc gives a penalty away for a needless croc roll which leads to their try. The deliberate knock was brain dead as well, it was always going to be a yellow for it.
The rushed defence is not as great a tactic as it’s made out to be, we left gaps everywhere and could’ve been exposed more than we were. Over all another poor team performance, scoreline doesn’t tell the real story.
If Leinster played the Racing team that Ulster played last night, I can guarantee that we wouldn’t have put the same score on them that Ulster did. Ulster are playing like the old Leinster and Leinster look like a team that are unsure of what they want to do at times.
Greg Kelly
It was a weird sort of game. Everyone and his dog knew Leinster would win it. Even when Quins were within 3 you never felt that would actually win the game. That led to a looseness from Leinster. In the end the flood gates opened a bit.
I’d expect a lot more focus away from home next week.
Jackie McEachern
Glad for the BP win. But as other have said, too many errors. It feels like a team looking for their identity and not sure of themselves?
The defence is a definite problem and I think that’s going to be so costly against better teams.
There were some good performances for sure. Both McCarthy brothers were good. TOB, Larmour and Byrne were also bright spots for me.
Cormac Mannion
Do they not use a ball in training at all? So many poor passes, dropped passes, passes not going to hand, knock-ons in the tackle etc etc.
Just as well we can rely on our teak-tough defence to win matches… eh… oh…
Kevin Kelehan
Scrappy game, the absence of Keenan was really felt in organising the defence out wide, Quins did their homework and scored 5 tries by exploiting flaws. Thankfully the work at the breakdown was incessant and the penalty conveyer put Leinster in a position to score 7 tries. Larmour definitely back in serious form again and will push Lowe and Tommy O’Brien all the way for the starting shirts if he stays this sharp. You’d be expecting a sterner test from Tigers next week and a lot more cohesion from Ireland and visiting stars to ensure another win on the road. Frawley also seriously impressive taking the ball into contact and tackling.
Chris McDonnell
5 points are all you can get so fair play. Set piece was excellent. Of the 2 outhalves we have on the pitch neither were great thankfully frawley stepped up.
Gavin Hegarty
Last April we beat their firsts 62-0.
Today their reserves got a BP against us.
Nothing else to say.
Tom Clarke
Very sloppy performance. So many mistakes in attack and poor in defense. Early days but if that continues we won’t be winning a 5th star any time soon.
Andrew Tynan
Jaysus you lot are happy after us winning aren’t ye? 🤣🤣🤣🙄
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Every Tuesday we post a “bonus chat” from our Sunday evening wrap pod recording, here’s the latest one.
This is the lead-in : “Next weekend sees the opening round of the Champions Cup, and rather than engage in the annual complaints about the format which doesn’t seem to be moving the needle with the organisers, we thought instead we’d start our coverage by looking at the various contenders for winning the 2026 final in Bilbao, which Leinster fans won’t need reminding is where we won our fourth, and crucially our most recent, star. I suppose David before you list your contenders from around the continent I should probably ask, are Leinster one of them?“
HARPIN' ON RUGBY 