31 May 2025; Hugo Keenan of Leinster scores his side’s fourth try, despte the tackle to Scarlets players Johnny Williams and Blair Murray, during the United Rugby Championship quarter-final match between Leinster and Scarlets at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin. Photo by Seb Daly/Sportsfile
🏉 Kicking, the habit 🏉 Forcing it 🏉 Sam P at 10 🏉 Keen on Keenan 🏉 Still harpin’ on Leo
What’s the opposite of “peaking at the right time”? We look a shadow of the team we were a few months ago.
Cuan Mulligan
Something wrong in the camp, I think one has to start looking at the coaching. Sam P was better in the second half, but god awful in the first. He played like Ross Byrne, taking the ball standing still, and shovelling shite out the back. Makes me think its not the players, how can two very different 10s play almost identically.. how they are being coached.. he is a player full of flare. it looks like its been knocked out of him. Glasgow will feel very confident in coming and winning…
Gavin Hegarty
What the hell has happened to us? Against Quinns and Glasgow we were world class. Simply unplayable. Now it seems we can’t put anything together and look like a scratch side who just met in the changing room.
I really hate to say it but based on recent performances I have no confidence of any silverware this season.
Kevin Kelehan
The arrogance of fans expecting Leinster to skittle every side who comes to Dublin, at times there were unforced handling errors but credit Scarlets for turning up and forcing a good number of errors. After La Rochelle and Glasgow this is the third time this season a first choice Leinster have dogged out wins from games they could equally have lost. Onwards next week with Glasgow looking for third time lucky, vital that we don’t let them build the vibe that Leinster aren’t scrappers.
Lorraine Preston O’Connor
Are the players afraid to get injured before the Lions tour? There’s definitely something amiss!!!!
Hubert Gallagher
We looked disjointed and lacking in confidence. Trying to force things when we didn’t need to – giving away unnecessary turnovers instead of keeping the ball. At least we learnt to kick a few of our penalties. We try to entertain and play an expansive game without winning the right to expand. We need to do the simple things accurately, scrum, lineout, quick recycle and control the ball. Defensively something is very off – we’re leaking tries, often through individual mistakes – 2 people went onto one player leaving a gap and leading to a score.
You don’t become a bad team overnight but psychology especially big game psychology! Glasgow will be bursting to put one over on us – so we need to really cut the errors and work to control the game and field position.
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We have real talent in Leinster but for some reason this talent is not firing. On paper we were 40+ better than this team yet we couldn’t string any phases together.
Why do we want to defend? We just keep on aimlessly kicking the ball away. Madness.
Tommy O’Brien is class and has to be capped in Georgia/Portugal.
On a positive note on spiral from Sam has to be the best kick I’ve ever seen! Simple exquisite
Chris McDonnell
No real spark but effort was very good. Gunne passed well but didn’t really offer any threat, Sam is not controlling the game, loads of really good stuff but not really getting a grip. Boyle is a good one. What’s going on with furlong? Why is he on the bench if he’s not getting much needed game time.
Christy O’Connor
This proves that Frawley should’ve been given more time at ten.
Andrew Bailey
It’s a sad situation when you know once referee is announced that he will be awful. Whitehouse did not disappoint. Aside from that we have a problem at 10
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10 May 2025; Ryan Baird of Leinster celebrates after scoring his side’s third try during the United Rugby Championship match between Leinster and Zebre Parma at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin. Photo by Seb Daly/Sportsfile
🏉 12 different tries 🏉 Tyler’s attack 🏉 Sam’s starts 🏉 That JB narrative 🏉 Improved forwards
16. Tommaso Di Bartolomeo 17. Muhamed Hasa 18. Ion Neculai 19. Matteo Canali 20. Giacomo Ferrari 21. Alessandro Fusco 22. Giacomo Da Re 23. Filippo Drago
BKT United Rugby Championship 24/25
Saturday, May 10, 2025
KO 5:15pm Aviva Stadium
Live on : RTÉ News Channel, Premier Sports 1, URC.tv
Kept kicking the ball away and when we actually had a straightforward kick to draw level at 37-37 we went for the corner. Summed up our brainless play all evening. I’m really annoyed about how we played. Yet again we’ve faltered in a big match
Gavin Hegarty
Anyone else think henshaw was a huge weak link? He didn’t bring anything to the party.
Head to simani is a straight red
Yellow at the try line should be a penalty try
But we shouldn’t have been in that position.
Horrific first half that we shouldn’t have been that bad in.
Andrew Tynan
The ref giving a saints player a yellow card at the end but yet no penalty try? What?
Kevin Kelehan
Kicking the ball at Saints back 3 was never going to be a winner, Leinster were lucky to be in the game right to the end, tactically the approach did not play to Leinster’s strengths. Credit Saints they nailed 90% of their chances
Colette Caddle
They were the better side and deserved the win.
Christy O’Connor
Nienaber has to go for me, I’ve never liked his tactics and I was never hopeful we would win with his style. Yes we played better the last few weeks but against very poor opposition
Daniel James
I think we should’ve played at least the bones of this team against scarlets last week as I worry that the international are sometime undercooked. Also i think we need to win an URC before the champions cup and we have been focusing to much on getting that 5th star rather then winning our league then going for the star. The intensity from Northampton was incredible all game I expected them to get tired towards the end but they have it there all where as I thought we got tired at times and their scores seemed a bit easy.
Cuan Mulligan
Saints deserved the win. However some very dubious ref calls. The possible try at the end should not have been disallowed for the reason the ref gave, the corner flag is not in touch.. however Byrne was on the floor and it’s questionable if he is allowed to touch it down. About 2 or 3 plays before it, near their try line, I think Pollock goes off his feet crawling on his knees over our players and a second player in goes into take the ball… not sharing this to gripe.. if you leave your win down to ref calls you don’t deserve it.. but the reffing was poor
Jackie McEachern
Saints were very good (and it pains me to say that). But I don’t understand not starting Barrett.
And I’m not sure resting the starters leading up to these big games is a good strategy. I know it’s a physical game but we’ve seen time and time again where they come into the big matches rested but not cohesive.
Richard Collumb
Useless today & Tactics were terrible. That’s down to the coaches. Given team & budget the players & management get judged on performances in May & they aren’t good enough.
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26 April 2025; Will Connors of Leinster is tackled by Taine Plumtree of Scarlets during the United Rugby Championship match between Scarlets and Leinster at Parc Y Scarlets in Swansea, Wales. Photo by Chris Fairweather/Sportsfile
Really poor from almost every perspective but hopefully just a bump in the road. I know we were missing many of the first team but there were still far too many errors and poor decisions.
Christy O’Connor
Scarlets line speed was brilliant, put us under lots of pressure and caused us to make so many mistakes, granted some were unforced. Better team won
Ollie Sinnott
Ross Byrne, Frawley, the Osbornes, Tector, Baird, O Brien and Mccarthy are a couple of steps down in quality from the first 23. Only player to improve their reputation this evening was Jack Boyle and Soroka.
Bert McLoughlin
People whinging about team selection pisses me off! Apart from what’s coming next week, the team out on the field today were good enough to win the game. BUT they made way too many errors and didn’t deserve to win the game.
Congratulations to Scarlets, they played really well and deserved to win that game
Greg Kelly
Scarlets came out needing the 5 points. They were hungry and quite simply Leinster we not. Fair play to the Scarlets, they were well worth the win and showed great composure given that Leinster have a habit of clawing back games. It looked like Leinster had both eyes on Northampton and a lot of the players knew that their knockout involvement going forward was over.
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HARPIN' ON RUGBY 