24 January 2026; Charlie Tector of Leinster scores his side’s third try despite the efforts of Caolin Blade of Connacht during the United Rugby Championship match between Connacht and Leinster at Dexcom Stadium in Galway. Photo by Sam Barnes/Sportsfile
Another win on the road glad to get the 5 points but much improvement needed going forward 👍
Greg Kelly
Connacht were plucky and obvious up for the occasion. They applied a lot of pressure in the opening hour but fell away a bit afterwards. They were looking for big moments but fell short of a real catalyst. Leinster were sputtering along and wasteful in attack…again. Ultimately Leinster were the better team and on the hour you always felt they would pull away. As has been said week after week if we do that against the top opposition we’ll get caned but but was enough against a spirited but limited Connacht team.
Kevin Kelehan
Ireland lost big tonight unless Jack Boyle does a Lazarus, have a good bet on England for the Six Nations. The Leinster scrum did amazingly, Niall Smyth passed his exam as did Sparrow and Jerry Cahir again proving the academy let more than Tadhg Beirne slip through their fingers. Charlie Tector again superb but one of the Connacht back row should have got man of the match for over an hour they had the upper hand. Delighted to take 5 points out of a decent Connacht shift.
Chris McDonnell
Another game where harry shows why he was Leinster’s 4th choice last season. He’s good defensively and can kick goals but he’s got nothing in attack.
James Gill
Harry 💯 % kicking might get him an Ireland start. Charlie Tector should b in the A squad. Prendergast was good for connacht but need a few more forwards badly. Leinster building nicely
Eamon Phelan
Sam illo can scrummage
Get in the conversation yourself by leaving
your own thoughts each week after the full time whistle
17 January 2026; Dan Sheehan of Leinster scores his side’s first try despite the tackle of Tom Spring of Aviron Bayonnais during the Investec Champions Cup match between Bayonne and Leinster at the Stade Jean Dauger in Bayonne, France. Photo by Brendan Moran/Sportsfile
Bayonne are decent ballers, that stadium is as tough to go to as La Rochelle. Eked it out and like the Ulster game they were always going to.
David Ryle
Well done. Great resilience against a team who lose rarely at home. Great vision from Sam to follow the ball for his try.
Gavin Little
Basic skills have dropped way off. The defence isn’t working. Is there a plan of attack?
Coaches have a lot to answer for. Players too.
Ken Tancred
I think Bayonne deserve more credit than most people are giving them credit for
Peter Tracey
Worst European performance I’ve seen in a long long time. They don’t know how to attack anymore sadly. They’ve forgotten how to defend as well. Boyle was brilliant as was VDF. Don’t know what Ioane offers at the minute. Stopping the progress of Tector and Cooney. Not his fault that Leinster signed him though.
Chris McDonnell
This style is seriously attritional. Another 4 players injured again today. We need to start going around teams not through them.
Christy O’Connor
Another hard watch, another limp to victory. It’s not going to last much longer playing like this and getting wins.
Sandra Seery
A win is a win. Thrilled for Sam P. Great insights for passing and his try was super.
Craig Grehan
First thing, can we stop the over hype of Sam P’s inclusion 2 lucky bounces. One led to him falling to a try. The other to a bit of a run that nearly led to a try.
Overall, smelly performance. We won, but was smelly. Where has our attacking prowess gone ?
Why is Ioane even here ? Or is it us using him wrong?
Our defense looked a bit sloppy too. A win is a win, but we’re in need of actually playing rugby. Not playing a game plan..
Get in the conversation yourself by leaving
your own thoughts each week after the full time whistle
3 January 2026; Tommy O’Brien of Leinster on his way to scoring his side’s fifth try during the United Rugby Championship match between Leinster and Connacht at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin. Photo by Brendan Moran/Sportsfile
Huge improvement over previous performances but still quite worrying how we switched off for about 25mins in the first half and allowed Connacht to go 17-14 ahead. Sam really mixed the good with the awful.
The good – some great kicks, passes and tries
The awful – two dreadful turnovers where he got turned over and the poor attempt at a tackle in the second half. Also – the sliced penalty that went dead.
Gotta feel for Connacht, the squad is paper-thin and while they showed flashes of Lancaster at times, they ran out of steam
Damien Mullen
Premier League v Pub League
Chris McDonnell
Good to see passing rugby again. Deeny’s best game by a mile. If Aki is not dropped from the 6 nations squad then Farrell is not watching games.
Darran Kearney
Great overall performance and we did well to steady the ship after a ropey 15 mins. Leo said it post match and opposition will target it to get scoreboard pressure on us and back that we’ll wilter. The tough tight games we are winning now hopefully stand later in the season. Concern is every team looks good attacking against Connacht at the moment. Just can’t see given form this season to date how we’d beat serious contenders for silverware, we all thought the same in 2008/9 though!!. Plenty of road left to go for things to come together. Got to have Harry for the big matches.. Agree with Luke Fitzgerald, no amount of skill can offset the D weakness in Sams game, another 3 or 4 horrors this evening again unfortunately. Still young and will get better but tackling is 99% mindset, the risk is he’ll be another in a long line of extremely talented 10’s who don’t achieve what their talent deserves as coaches can’t risk them.
Cormac Mannion
Can anyone explain why Brace went all the way back from our tryline to the halfway line to blow for the penalty from Connacht’s scrum when he had been playing advantage all that time? I’ve never seen advantage called back to that degree before. Personally I thought it was ridiculous. Connacht made approx 45m with advantage, got turned over on our tryline yet he goes.back for the penalty to them???
Richard Kennedy
Finally, some adventurous rugby. Admittedly it’s easier when the pack is completely on top but we haven’t seen it at all this season so it was refreshing to see it actually happen.
John Curran
Worried for Ireland, both Bundy and Henshaw look well past it, yes I know Robbie wasn’t playing tonight but in recent performance
James Gill
The best flowing rugby leinster played all season and Sam’s passing was outrageous at times nobody can spin it as good as him
Valerie Tumulty
I just want to say, as a Roscommon woman, I love Andrew Porter❤️❤️
Eamon Saunders
Good performance and some great individual performances from the younger lads great win
Lorcán Murphy
More flow in the 2nd half but very worried for Connacht at the same time
Michael Canavan
I would like to say congratulations to the connacht fans , I haven’t seen one negative comment on the game , leinster getting lucky, its the refs fault, and all the usual shit likewise get from another club i won’t mention, so I just like to say i admire connacht for that , thank you connacht and supporters
Get in the conversation yourself by leaving
your own thoughts each week after the full time whistle
LEINSTER :15. Ciarán Frawley 14. Tommy O’Brien 13. Rieko Ioane 12. Robbie Henshaw 11. James Lowe 10. Harry Byrne 9. Jamison Gibson-Park
1. Andrew Porter 2. Rónan Kelleher 3. Thomas Clarkson 4. Joe McCarthy 5. James Ryan 6. Max Deegan 7. Josh van der Flier 8. Caelan Doris (c)
16. John McKee 17. Paddy McCarthy 18. Tadhg Furlong 19. Diarmuid Mangan 20. Scott Penny 21. Fintan Gunne 22. Charlie Tector 23. Andrew Osborne
Munster: 15. Shane Daly; 14. Calvin Nash, 13. Tom Farrell, 12. Alex Nankivell, 11. Thaakir Abrahams; 10. Jack Crowley, 9. Craig Casey; 1. Michael Milne, 2. Lee Barron, 3. Michael Ala’alatoa; 4. Edwin Edogbo, 5. Tom Ahern; 6. Tadhg Beirne (C), 7. Jack O’Donoghue, 8. Gavin Coombes.
Replacements: 16. Diarmuid Barron, 17. Jeremy Loughman, 18. John Ryan, 19. Jean Kleyn, 20. Fineen Wycherley, 21. Paddy Patterson, 22. Dan Kelly, 23. John Hodnett
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? 🤣🤣🤣🙄
Get in the conversation yourself by leaving
your own thoughts each week after the full time whistle
28 November 2025; Joshua Kenny of Leinster scores his side’s second try during the United Rugby Championship match between Dragons and Leinster at Rodney Parade in Newport, Wales. Photo by Brendan Moran/Sportsfile
Glad for the bonus point win but am genuinely concerned about the discipline issues. I really worry about the European matches to come.
Christy O’Connor
That was a hard watch. The discipline was terrible, a lot of unforced errors and 3 yellow cards.
There was some scattered good passages of play but overall that was a terrible performance. We could’ve lost that game and not have had any complaints that Dragons didn’t deserve it.
I’ve said it many times now, I’m not a fan of Nienabar and it’s getting harder and harder to enjoy watching Leinster under his style of play
Kevin Kelehan
Better second half, Luke McGrath added an urgency and Snyman’s offloading came off perfectly. Against better sides the penalty count would have been fatal, they really need to stop giving away penalties at the breakdown.
Pádraig Turley
A curate’s egg of a performance, but bonus point very welcome.
Cormac Mannion
South African refs – a great bunch of lads
Eamon Saunders
Need to be better but getting loads of game time for the second choice players we will need them going forward
Gavin Delves
Ulster Munster and Connacht have ireland players playing this week and leinster had snyman in the second have why no one else becacause leo does what hes told by the IRFU things have to change
Get in the conversation yourself by leaving
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.
Last night there was something of a standoff here in Harpin’ Manor. On ‘normal’ weekends, my flagging the date and time of the latest Leinster & Ireland match (usually by way of a note on the fridge) informs/warns the rest of the family that his is the two-hour block where Dad is going to be screaming at the main TV for the duration and be sure to find something else to do.
But more often than not, and indeed on most weekends this season, said match has been on a Saturday, and given I’m the only real rugby fan in the house, I suppose you’d forgive the others for assuming it was the same this week.
So it turns out the four of us have been actively going about our lives all week with three of us under the assumption that Friday evening would be spent binge-watching the new episodes of Stranger Things, while my plans involved a different type of Dragons, with absolutely no dungeons.
Things came to a head when we sat down to dinner as I rocked up to the table wearing my Leinster jersey.
“Dad, why did you change into that????” asked one of the kids.
Given I’m unashamedly one of those nerdy dads who not only implements household systems like putting regular notes on the fridge, but also gets extremely smug when the opportunity arises to point out that people didn’t follow it, my reply was dripping with sarcasm.
“Because of the match”
“What match?”
“The match you’d know about if you looked at the fridge.”
My hubris came from the fact that I assumed this was a one v one conversation that I would easily win as the other two would remain neutral, if possibly rolling their eyes that dad is referring to another one of his nerdy systems again. But in actual fact, I had talked myself into a perilous 1 v 3 situation.
Sasha gets the YC he should have then it changes the opening 20 mins.
Ryan may have ended his stint as a front liner with his stupidity there.
Interested to know how the SA LHP can hinge down 3 times in a row and they Paddy Mc gets a YC 😵💫
Mathew Carley lost control and composure and he lost buy in from the Irish players.
Christy O’Connor
I can’t disagree with any of our cards, except that Ryan’s could’ve been a straight red. Sacha should’ve been carded though. We were panicky when on the ball, took us for ever to get out of our own half in the 2nd half.
The better team won in the end, but other than their scrum, I don’t think SA were all that great.
David Harold
SA didn’t go out to win the match. They went out to “beat” Ireland. But the ended up winning the match. And deservedly so.
Gavin Hegarty
My problem is at what rugby has become.
A ref, two touch judges and a tmo review sfms no wrap shoulder to the head of Tob and deem it only a penalty by not applying the correct laws.
The same laws they apply to Ryan’s moment of madness.
Can’t help but feel this was influenced by the same outcry over reds this week. Carley and his team copped out.
That early in the game it could have made a huge difference.
After this Ireland did themselves no favours but honestly did well to stay in the game.
RGs card being rescinded soon after was a new one to me! If it was red would it have been! No.
World rugby need to halt where rugby is going. You now have tmos that want the spotlight and we are spending far too long reviewing footage. For this to happen and still have the wrong outcome is pathetic.
John O Halloran
What did I just watch? A mental game, a bizarre reffing performance, a bizarre Irish performance of indisipline, and more subs than the battle of the Atlantic.
Cormac Mannion
The lack of a card for Feinberg set the tone for the rest of the match. I hate Carley or Dickson reffing either a Leinster or Ireland match and he didn’t fail to disappoint once again tonight
I don’t know if it’s hilarious or pathetic how the Saffa trolls are out in force once again tonight. Some are even still bleating about ROG’s try in 2004.
Oh well, they can press their grubby noses to the window in February when the 6N starts once again as they whimper to be allowed to compete in it.
Kevin Kelehan
Worst refereeing performance of 2025, destroyed the contest by letting Rassie get inside his head. Boks ruthless scrummagers, Ireland died with their boots on, Could have been a 40 point defeat when down to 12 men
Bert McLoughlin
Carley should do us a favour and retire. Boks could have beaten us by way more if they actually played a bit of rugby instead of being 🔔🔚’s and trying to pummel our pack (anti rugby if you will) they along with Carley killed the game as a spectacle
GIFsRugbyNStuff (@gifsrugbynstuff.bsky.social)
Ireland’s finishing XV
Paddy Mc Kelleher Bealham
Beirne Prendergast
Doris Conan one armed vdF
Casey Sam
JGP bundee Farrell ringrose
Crowley
Justin Deegan (@justindeegan.bsky.social)
Having 15 on the field is always a help. I had the head bitten off me before when I said Ireland’s discipline not as foremost as it was a couple of years ago. Well, I hope today was the culmination rather than the next step down. Piss poor.
Early subs from Sth Africa also took their foot off their pedal.
Get in the conversation yourself by leaving
your own thoughts each week after the full time whistle
A win was satisfying in the end to change the whole squad near enough and not be a million miles away is success in my eyes can you imagine if we played the majority off the squad today in most or all games how they could transform into another golden era lol
Always happy with a win
Bert McLoughlin
Very poor 1st half, looks like nobody has any idea what’s happening with the lineout. 2nd half was better when Prendergast, Conan and C Prendergast came on the field
Mark Hunter
Sloppy, clunky unimpressive
Conor C (via BlueSky)
The difference getting clean ball and then changing up first receiver made was huge. Allowed the attack to get set more and then for Sam to take the ball a little wider with options available to him
Get in the conversation yourself by leaving
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.
When I was harping on Leinster’s match against Zebre the weekend before last, I kept saying how there was no result the boys in blue could achieve that would help the fans get over the disappointment of Croke Park the week before, and that the same happened in May when the same Italian opponents rocked up to the Aviva seven days after the Northampton defeat.
For some reason it didn’t occur to me that Andy Farrell’s Ireland are in a similar boat today as they prepare to face Japan, although perhaps the expectations of victory in Chicago weren’t as high as the previous two weeks. Thankfully Keego spotted that in the preview show and it does make today’s test match at HQ a little less of a spectacle than it could be, which could explain why I keep getting emails about the “last remaining tickets still available”, although the easier explanation is that they’re just too goddam expensive amidst a cost of living crisis in the country, I suppose that’s a matter of opinion.
Whatever the reason I find myself drawn more to the double header of sorts this evening, with a fascinating Ireland XV playing Spain at 4pm and France hosting the Springboks at 8 – a veritable feast of rugby union for a Saturday that makes “getting family stuff done” something of a military operation.
Speaking of family, I thought I’d use my column this week to harp on myself for a change, or at least how I came to become enough of a fan of rugby union to maintain an online entity for the best part of two decades. It most certainly has not been the traditional route for Irish rugby fans.
And what is this “traditional route” exactly? Well, while the sport has definitely grown a lot in popularity over the years, I’m not quite sure it has yet shaken the tag of “niche”, particularly with such a complicated set of Laws continuing to form a barrier to turning casual fans who tune in for the test matches into ones who will tune in every week to my podcast.
So definitely the most common way the sport seeps into people’s souls is through family. Your grandfather once togged out with Tony Ward. Your uncle was captain of Mary’s Junior 3rds for ten years. Your big brother played in that Senior Cup team that almost beat Rock that time. And since 2013/14, plenty of inspiration for girls to get involved in women’s rugby, given the right support structures of course.
But for me, there was absolutely nothing in my past to connect me to egg-chasing, far from it. in fact, VERY far from it, over 8000km to be more precise. I lived the first 8 years of my life in a town called Pittsburg in California, though I eventually stopped telling people that in casual conversation as they usually mistook it for the one ending in ‘h’ that’s in Pennsylvania. So instead I’d use the name of the town that had the hospital where I was born, which had the much more “mom and apple pie” name of Walnut Creek.
To explain why I was raised by my grandparents, and to then explain why they brought that 8-year-old only child to Ireland, would take me way too far from the subject matter so I’ll leave you with those two facts for this article and leave the details for my memoirs 😜.
So there we were, an American couple in their early 60s and an 8-year old boy arriving in Dublin. Their dream, or at least my grandfather’s, had always been to settle in a cottage in Connemara or something like that for their retirement but with me in tow, they thought it best to settle around the capital, and obviously once here, it was important to get me established in a school.
At the time, school was just that, school. 8 year old me wasn’t going to know the difference between public and private, but now I do appreciate how fortunate I was for them to be able to get me into quite an exclusive private one. And with the new surroundings came a lot of new things to both appreciate and purchase, like school uniforms, and also uniform for some sport called rugby, which was pretty much a second religion at the school.
HARPIN' ON RUGBY 