16 December 2022; Caelan Doris of Leinster makes a break in the build-up to his side’s first try during the Heineken Champions Cup Pool A Round 2 match between Leinster and Gloucester at the RDS Arena in Dublin. Photo by Harry Murphy/Sportsfile
Earlier this year, Gloucester Rugby lock, Ed Slater, announced his retirement from the game with immediate effect after his diagnosis with Motor Neurone Disease (MND).
To help support Ed and his family, Gloucester Rugby opened a JustGiving page and to date over £220,000 has been raised to help support Ed, his wife Jo and their three children.
With Gloucester Rugby playing Leinster Rugby last weekend in the Heineken Champions Cup, both clubs wanted to mark the occasion and also use the opportunity to highlight Ed’s illness and to try and raise even more funds for him and his family.
As a result, two unique Leinster Rugby and Gloucester Rugby jerseys were signed by the match day squads, with both jerseys bearing his name and the number four.
Captains Garry Ringrose and Ben Meehan presented the jerseys to each other before the game and the jerseys will now be used as a raffle item on the Leinster Rugby Instagram account.
To enter, you only need to reply to the post on Instagram and then donate a minimum of £20/€20 to the JustGiving page set up for the Slater family.
The winners will need to show proof of donation before their prize will be allocated to them.
Conor Cronin There are a lot of things to be said about playing the team in front of you, and let’s be honest, the team in front of us were less than brilliant.
But! Let’s acknowledge that they were good for the last 20 mins in a way that they weren’t for the first 60 and kept us relatively quiet. Lots of fans expected 70+ points over the 80 mins and a second string Gloucester kept us very far from that, and that stems from a lack of cohesion, and a few players misfiring at a couple of moments. 50 22 kicks that missed, territorial kicks going dead, passes going loose… There are some things that could be worked on. And there’s no harm in that. Let’s work on simple passes, on making sure that that first receiver’s takes the ball cleanly, that the first receiver is ready for the pass… Let’s make sure that the simple stuff goes right so that against stronger opposition we aren’t losing territory or points
Chris McDonnell Mcgrath is so slow and his pass is awful, he rarely moves the ball to the backs either. It was like watching matt o’connor rugby. How we let patterson go and kept mcgrath baffles me
Kevin Joyce There’s been a lot of talk about what the Gloucester team selection means for the competition. First of all, I’d like to say that I agree that the current format is bad, but it’s absolutely not to blame for what we witnessed tonight. The idea behind the change was to eliminate dead rubbers, but what hope have we of doing that when a team that had a perfect start to the tournament decides to raise the white flag in their second game? As long as the English and French clubs continue to be arrogant enough to believe their domestic leagues are more important than a European competition, no amount of format changes can prevent Gloucester from doing what they did tonight. The only way to completely eliminate dead rubbers would be to add 8 teams and turn the tournament into a straight knockout, but even then, if Gloucester were drawn against Leinster in the first round, they would absolutely surrender and pick a B team like they did tonight, because that’s exactly the kind of club they are and the loser mentality they have. So good luck in the premiership Gloucester, but you’ve about as much chance of winning it as you have of winning the Heineken.
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9 Doris darting, 8 Larmour leaping, 7 Lowe a laughing 6 McGrath marauding, 5 Kelleher conquering , 4 Ryan reaching, 3 Kelleher crossing, 2 van der Flier flying, 1 Lowe a leading, and a Pa-artridge in a pear tree!! 🎄😄 #LEIvGLOhttps://t.co/igiHqH6ywA
I loved that Leinster didn’t kick the ball out when they were 50 points up at the 82min. They showed they were hungry for the game, despite Gloucester fielding that team#LeinsterRugby#LEIvGLO
Absolute humperdinking as expected, but positives: Polledri looks big and strong and gets 80 mins on the clock Gotostev steadied the scrum and looked really powerful carrying. Billy, Atkinson and Clement all had great games. It was all a bit men against boys though#LEIvGLO 🍒⚪️
Brian Nisbet 57-0 at the RDS. Gloucester disrespected the competition and their opposition with their team selection and paid the price. Not going to complain about a BP win for Leinster, but I do feel sorry for the slaughtered lambs
RichardMifsud Venerunt vidimus vicimus. The 57 was obviously pleasing, the 0 infinitely more so. Gloucester brought an under strength team and got what they deserved (not having a go). You have to feel for their players TBH. We weren’t at our best yet that was more than enough to beat Gloucester. Greater tests await For now Merry Xmas
If you think you can answer questions like the one in the graphic above in five seconds or less, then have a go at our quiz there’s 12 altogether, see if you can do better than three of our contributors.
Welcome to my 80+ column, a weekly post featuring final thoughts from the week of rugby just gone.
WRAP OF A WRAP
As it got closer to kickoff time I was getting more and more concerned that Leinster’s Heineken Champions Cup opener against Racing 92 wouldn’t go the way I hoped. That may sound odd to a non-Leinster fan given our record this season but actually that’s more than likely the reality for most fans of any team no matter how successful. But especially so in this age where a red card can make a difference to a contest, although of course even that didn’t hurt us last week!
But as it turned out, I needn’t have worried because much like last year we appear to be kicking off our European campaign in determined mood, yes I know we were helped a lot by Racing’s own disciplinary issues but still we were solid especially on set piece as you can see by the numbers.
22 – @LeinsterRugby’s Dan Sheehan was successful with all 22 of his lineout throws against Racing 92 on Saturday (100%), the most successful throws registered by any hooker in a @ChampionsCup match since Opta have recorded this data (2009). Precision. pic.twitter.com/4hVAZyUNGz
One teeny tiny final point I’d like to make, when it came to “Star of the Match”, I’d have gone for JVDF over Doris – that’s nothing against the latter he certainly had some key involvements yet he did ship a couple of penalties as well, one at a breakdown I was sure he’d get carded for, so while I don’t believe in simply giving the gong to the guy who got the most tries on the day, I reckon we all know Josh does way more than that, right? Again it’s not crucial but hey it’s my opinion and sharing it is kinda what this column is for.
It was another match which was a pleasure to wrap up on our Sunday pod, with super contributions as always by Messrs Jackson & Mifsud, plus a “roving report” by Tom Coleman. If you missed it, check it out here or on most major platforms.
HARPIN’ ON…THAT RINGROSE TRY
If you haven’t listened to our weekly wrap pod yet, first of all, why the hell not???? Especially if you’re reading this column!!! Seriously though…what we do is harp our way through the timeline of the match from start to finish, focusing on the major incidents of course, but also pointing out the minor ones as well that the pundits may have missed like the ref giving out to Leinster’s players for celebrating a knock on!!!
For this week’s YouTube clip I used Mark’s analysis of the Garry Ringrose try, although personally I was equally impressed by the one that came before it because it had three components to it which were world class yet things we take for granted from the players in question…JGP finding the final lock picking pass, Dan Sheehan lurking in the wide channel and being able to force his way over the line, and finally Ross “Mr Touchline” Byrne popping over the most difficult placekick for a right-footer like it was nothing to him.
If you’re playing the clip above maybe pop over and subscribe to the channel too? That’s where we post our Preview Show as well as other content throughout the week.
200 UP
You may have noticed that our wrap pod was episode 199 which means the next one is a milestone so to mark it I asked three of the contributors to join me for a “season so far” quiz where I tested their knowledge of the twelve matches we have covered this season before the Champions Cup kicked off.
During the week I’ll publish the episode in such a way as you the listener can have a go at the questions as well, see how many you can get!
IN DEFENCE OF THE HCC FORMAT
Now I want to be careful how I word this point so that I’m absolutely clear on where I stand. A lot of people have complained about the format for the Champions Cup and I want to push back, however this does not mean I am totally in favour of it. Let me explain.
If you offered me just two choices for how the Champions Cup pool stage can be run, (1) the current way, or (2) the old way with pools of 4 playing home and away leading to quarterfinals, I would always always choose 2.
However, while the backlash against the current way seems to be 100% by most people, I’d probably put mine around the 70-80% mark, because I can actually see some benefits in the current way, while also some of the drawbacks maybe aren’t as bad as many point out.
First we should have a go at explaining the system. There are 24 qualifiers, 8 from each league. They are drawn into 2 pools of 12, everyone plays four matches, and the top 8 on each table go through to the knockout phase.
For starters, I’m not, nor have I ever been, totally committed to the “everyone must play everyone” concept to a league competition. In an ideal world yes, but in reality we have to be open to alternatives due to time and travel constraints, and if a competition is ultimately decided by knockout rounds, then that should allow for anyone who got lucky with the schedule to be “found out”.
And to balance out the smaller amount of matches, with the extra round of 16 it’s actually easier to advance out of the pool phase, meaning rather than rounds 5 and 6 in the past when you’d have many “dead rubbers”, you now have a round 5 which is completely cup rugby, although of course the 6th match is gone altogether.
I also must admit I do like the symmetry of this system. Maybe every team has different opponents but they are definitely not chosen by random. Last season, when Leinster were Pro14 champions, we got a schedule that had teams finishing 7th or 8th in the Top14 and Premiership. So our domestic record was duly rewarded.
This season, since we failed to reach the 21/22 URC final, things were a bit tougher as we were pitted against teams finishing 5th and 6th at home. And despite the result last weekend, Racing are still doing well this season as are Gloucester.
One more positive about the fixtures is that with this system you are always playing a team from a different league in the pool phase, which is kind of what the competition is meant to be all about. Often under the old format you’d be playing home and away against a team you’re already down to face twice in your domestic league.
Finally in defence of the four-match system, while many think it was done this way purely because of COVID so why keep it now, I think it also helps to facilitate the introduction of the South African clubs. Under the old system with three blocks of two matches each home and away, that would inflict a hell of a lot of travelling on everyone, so doing it this way means anyone travelling after round 4 at least knows it’s at the business end of the competition and thus is easier to market. Having to fly thousands of miles for a dead rubber should be avoided at all costs.
Also, one thing about the “old way” that always grated with me a lot was the “best runnersup” system where three teams got knockout rugby often because they got a much easier draw. That said, I did really, really, like rounds 3 and 4 with the home and away fixtures in December, that always gave the return matches a bit of extra edge. And when they had the two-legged round of 16 last season I thought that was a way of holding onto that so in a way it’s a shame they have taken even that away this season.
Right that’s enough of that, I reckon that’s enough pushback but like I said, I would hardly grumble if we changed back, although if it were down to me I’d ditch both for something else altogether, best leave that for another week’s column!!!
UNFORGETTABLE SEVENS
Another interesting weekend for the Irish Sevens programmes, with the women doing better this time around, getting all the way to the semifinals where they were outclassed by New Zealand. Although we didn’t get a medal from the event, the points were enough to move us up to 5th on the overall table.
Meanwhile in the men’s draw, after a confident start we then had a nightmare against Uruguay, a team we should be beating handily, where a rush of blood to the head by Mark Roche saw him get a second yellow card, thus a red, in the first half which left us a man short (def not good with only 7 in total) and while we were actually doing ok for a while, a second yellow left us with 5 and no hope and the defeat put us down in the competition for 9th place so we failed to build on the silver medal in Dubai, dropping down to 9th on the overall table.
If you’d like to keep up of their progress when these tournaments are on, one thing you can do is go to this link and click the “Add To Calendar” button and make sure you specify it’s just Ireland’s matches you want, and you’ll need to do it separately for men’s and women’s. Then you’ll get a 15m reminder before every match when you can decide whether or not you’re free to watch live on the World Rugby player.
Remember, the more we make it clear Irish fans are following the action, hopefully the more chance we have of getting a leg added to the tour for us to go and get pissed at enjoy.
Both series resume with the Canadian leg in the New Year.
INJURY REPORTS
Arguably the best injury report of the season!!! Obviously not for those in the bottom list but definitely good to see the one above it being empty. Even if Messrs Sexton & Furlong can’t get fit in time for Friday, I’m sure the RDS crowd would have no complaints welcoming back the 23 that did so well in Le Havre.
INJURY UPDATE – AVAILABLE FOR SELECTION:
Charlie Ngatai: came through the game at the weekend against Racing 92 with no issues after his return from a shoulder injury
INJURY UPDATE – FURTHER ASSESSMENT REQUIRED:
Johnny Sexton: increased his training load towards the end of last week and will be further assessed this week for a calf injury ahead of a final decision later in the week
Tadhg Furlong: increased his training load towards the end of last week and will be further assessed this week for an ankle injury ahead of a final decision later in the week
INJURY UPDATE – UNAVAILABLE FOR SELECTION:
N/A
There are no further updates on:
Robbie Henshaw (wrist), Martin Moloney (knee), Ciarán Frawley (knee), Will Connors (bicep), James Tracy (neck), Charlie Ryan (knee) and Tommy O’Brien (knee)
AIL UPDATE
Such a shame the cold snap put paid to so many club fixtures at the weekend, most of all the women’s AIL final which was due to get exposure on TG4, although they did well to reschedule it so quickly while still retaining the coverage. And added bonus might be that players like Beibhinn Parsons, who was of course in Cape Town with the 7s last weekend, might be able to take part, we’ll have to see.
Also in the women’s AIL there was the “Conference final” – this was a mini competition for teams finishing 5th through 8th so very much a consolation prize, but considering it was won by Wicklow RFC, who were being unfairly ridiculed last season for a couple of blow out results, that definitely makes this a worthwhile achievement to bring up on these pages.
Meanwhile over in the men’s, again the postponements were quickly rearranged as you can see below, but the weather couldn’t prevent Terenure College’s 100% start from coming to an end as they were downed 24-18 by Young Munster. Fair play to the Cookies for not only the result but also for getting the match played.
As you can see there’s a fascinating tussle for the top four positions developing between three Leinster sides and two Munster ones, meaning pretty much every match in the second half of the campaign should have meaning.
Women’s AIL
Conference final
Wicklow RFC 22-17 Galwegians
Saturday, December 17
League final
Blackrock College v Railway Union 2pm
Men’s AIL
Round 9
Ballynahinch PPD UCD
Clontarf 36-10 Garryowen
Dublin University PPD Cork Con
Lansdowne PPD Shannon
Young Munster 24-18 Terenure
Sat Dec 17
Lansdowne v Shannon
Sat Jan 7
Ballynahinch v UCD
Dublin University v Cork Con
THE NEXT BATCH OF HARPIN’
Like I said we’ve a quiz edition of the podcast during the week to celebrate the 200th episode, why not have a listen to see how well you’ve been paying attention to Leinster & Ireland’s season so far. Then we have Tom Coleman on episode 201 to tell us how he got on travelling to Le Havre and also to preview the visit of Gloucester, with of course the wrap of that match to do on Sunday, with all the usual features in between.
In the meantime, be sure to enjoy your rugby wherever you are. JLP
10 December 2022; Josh van der Flier of Leinster makes a break on his way to scoring his side’s sixth try during the Heineken Champions Cup Pool A Round 1 match between Racing 92 and Leinster at Stade Océane in Le Havre, France. Photo by Harry Murphy/Sportsfile
(also a report from France on the match conditions by Tom Coleman)
FULL TIME TAKES
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Andrew Potts Very good performance by Leinster and adapting well to Racing flooding the ruck. As always Leinster very focused as 15 on the park, impressive by JVdF nuisance all day which is a compliment for a 7 and still gas at 79 for a solo!
Gerald Williamson Will not complain. A convincing win in the end. Even missing one or two key players, Leinster did the job for the bonus pt win. Stuart has a idea what awaits him next season.
Gavin Hegarty Job done, BP done. Racing should be embarrassed to lose by 32 at ‘home’. We need to do better but you can only play what’s in front of you.
Chris McDonnell Without Sexton Henshaw and Furlong and still almost flawless. A little too much kicking for my liking but hey
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Utterly savage performance from Leinster in Le Havre. Bullying a Racing side who simply weren't at the races, they bested them in the scrum, lineout, breakdown and outplayed them defensively.
Taking 5-0 away against a SF team from last year is some marker to lay down. #R92vLEI
Leinster really laid down a marker today with an absolutely superb display, a total performance of excellence individually, as units, and as a team.#R92vLEI
RichardMifsud You don’t win anything in December, especially in the #championscup but you can lay down markers and #leinster did just that in Le Havre That was easily their best 80 of the season thus far Caelan Doris worthy POTM but big performances across the park Let’s see where we are in May in #dublin #R92vLEI
Jay Long You can only play what’s there but was really happy to see how hungry we were throughout. The lads chased everything. Sensational start. We’re on the road again!
Ross Carrick I wasn’t expecting this from Racing. Lack of sustained possession and phase building. Leinster aren’t at their best but are deserved three score leaders.
Robin Cafolla I remember when you feared going to France no matter who you were playing. Safe to say those days are over. Very dominant display from Leinster.
Brian Nisbet 10-42, what a wonderful victory in France! Perfect start to this year’s European campaign from a team that are playing very well together!
26 November 2022; Charlie Ngatai of Leinster offloads to teammate Rob Russell in the build up to his side’s second try during the United Rugby Championship match between Leinster and Glasgow Warriors at RDS Arena in Dublin. Photo by Harry Murphy/Sportsfile
Martin Loughrey Good result today with some good performances, but we’d have struggled against a better team. Far too many penalties, 15 in total really held us back. Russell obviously had a great game, I thought the back row were solid, and Osbourne impressed also. Ngatai’s offload for the 2nd try was some kind of witchcraft! Good to see Kelleher come through unscathed. All in all, not a vintage performance, but a solid result.
Andrew Potts Leinster played well and a number of solid performances by the next generation . Not sure about the penalty count, its unlike Leinster to be so spendthrift.
Chris McDonnell Harry made a big difference when he came on as did foley and Cosgrave.
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Well Leinster for me are the benchmark in this league. And on the basis of today, we’re a long way behind them.
Brian Nisbet 40-5 in the RDS. Glasgow had so much possession but just couldn’t turn it into points. Leinster did, over and over
RichardMifsud Dominant display by #LeinsterRugby against Glasgow Warriors Great to see returns from key players after injury Poor discipline and inaccuracies will keep the coaches busy but overall a very welcome return to #URC action for the boys
HARPIN' ON RUGBY 