490 : Bayonne v Leinster wrap

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

🏉 The kicking game

🏉 Blunt attack

🏉 Rotating 15s

🏉 Lineouts

🏉 Playing catchup

THIS WEEK’S GUEST

RICHARD MIFSUD

FULL TIME TAKES

Kevin Kelehan

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..

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CHAMPIONS CUP WRAP

Round 4

Pau 24–26 Bulls

Bath 63–10 Edinburgh

Sharks 50–12 Clermont

Bayonne 13–22 Leinster

Stormers 39–26 Leicester

Toulouse 77–7 Sale

Munster 29–31 Castres

Gloucester 14–31 Toulon

Bristol 15–27 Bordeaux

Northampton 43-28 Scarlets

La Rochelle 17–27 Harlequins

Glasgow 28–3 Saracens

NEXT HARPIN’

TUESDAY

BONUS CHAT : “Jack B, Josh K & Max D”

WEDNESDAY

80+ COLUMN

489 : Bayonne v Leinster preview

Our guest : NEIL “KEEGO” KEEGAN

www.keegolaughs.com

Apologies Up Front on Apple Podcasts

Leinster: 15 Jimmy O’Brien 14 Tommy O’Brien 13 Garry Ringrose 12 Robbie Henshaw 11 Joshua Kenny 10 Harry Byrne 9 Jamison Gibson-Park

1 Jack Boyle 2 Rónan Kelleher 3 Tadhg Furlong 4 RG Snyman 5 James Ryan 6 Max Deegan 7 Josh van der Flier 8 Caelan Doris (c)

16 Dan Sheehan 17 Jerry Cahir 18 Thomas Clarkson 19 Joe McCarthy 20 Scott Penny 21 Luke McGrath 22 Sam Prendergast 23 Rieko Ioane

Bayonne : 15 Cheikh Tiberghien 14 Tom Spring 13 Sireli Maqala 12 Manu Tuilagi 11 Yohan Orabe 10 Joris Segonds 9 Herschel Jantjies

1 Ignacio Calles 2 Lucas Martin 3 Junior Tagi 4 Ewan Johnson 5 Lucas Paulos 6 Alexandre Fischer 7 Arthur Iturria (c) 8 Nika Lomidze

16 Facundo Bosch 17 Emosi Tumania 18 Emerick Setiano 19 Alvaro Garcia Iandolino 20 Baptiste Heguy 21 Manex Ariceta 22 Guillaume Martocq 23 Victor Hannoun

Investec Champions Cup 25/26 – Round 4

Saturday, January 17, 2026

Stade Jean Dauger

KO 3:15pm

Live on : Premier Sports 2

Referee : Luke Pearce (Eng)

AR 1 : Joe James (Eng)

AR 2 : Jonathan Healy (Eng)

TMO : Stuart Terheege (Eng)

80+ column : January 14

ON THIS WEEK’S COLUMN…

WRAP OF A WRAP
RETURN OF THE KING
‘DAM LUCK
MUNSTER DE-KLEYNED*
TOOTHLESS SHARKS
CLICKBAIT OF THE WEEK
FINAL ROUND PERMUTATIONS
NATIONS CHAMPIONSHIP “EXPLAINED”
LEINSTER SQUAD UPDATE
TROLL PATROL
COMPETITION UPDATES (incl Celtic Challenge)
NEXT HARPIN’

WRAP OF A WRAP

We’ve recently added a new feature that’s proving relatively popular. As I watch the latest Leinster/Ireland match live, I take meticulous notes on the action in my own shorthand – I had been deleting them each week but this season I started sharing them on Substack for shits and giggles, and a few weeks ago I added the real-time comments of the various Harpin commentators as they reacted to key moments of the match in our WhatsApp group. I thought it best to redact their names, but for this week I got the idea to colour code the redactions so you could at least see patterns in what they are saying.

Below is a sample of how the group reacted to the double blow of Tommy O’Brien getting a yellow card and Ciarán Frawley going off injured…

It’s a lot of extra work but it’s also a fun new addition to my rewatch on Sunday mornings and with the positive response I have gotten I’ll keep it going for the foreseeable.

Thankfully the wrap pod itself was also fun to produce given the result! Hugo as ever did a top notch job going back over the key points, in fact for this match we had to go longer than usual as there was so much to take in.

ICYMI you’ll find the pod here.

RETURN OF THE KING

They will begin their 2026 Six Nations campaign with a clash against England at Allianz Stadium in London.

Bemand names 10 uncapped players in first Ireland squad of 2026

Joe Harvey – RugbyPass.com

It’s 2026 and for the Irish women’s senior rugby team, the time to reflect on the amazing gains made in the last World Cup cycle is gone. Now it is time to begin the next one and build on that amazing performance against the French in Bristol.

And naturally it is imperative that we begin that cycle with a convincing victory and I very much back the girls to get the job done.

What’s that? Our Six Nations opener is against World Champions England in London? OK, maybe not “imperative” then, but you get the idea…

Probably the name that jumps out of Bemand’s squad the most is that of Erin King who was of course a very conspicuous absentee from RWC2025 and is already helping the Wolfhounds tear up trees in the Celtic Challenge. And as we watch the Irish sides dominate that competition yet again, it’s clear that once the impressive list of Premiership players are folded in (Aoife Wafer, Brittany Hogan, Cliodhna Moloney-MacDonald, El Perry, Niamh O’Dowd, Grace Moore, Neve Jones, Sam Monaghan and Nancy McGillivray) we’ll have quite the squad.

Even though we have both England and France away this season, I am still very much looking forward to this campaign.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL 80+ COLUMN ON SUBSTACK

488 : Leinster v La Rochelle wrap

10 January 2026; Harry Byrne of Leinster celebrates after converting an 80th minute penalty to give his side a 25-24 victory during the Investec Champions Cup match between Leinster and La Rochelle at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin. Photo by Seb Daly/Sportsfile

🏉 That start & that finish
🏉 More injuries
🏉 More ill discipline
🏉 Breakdown decisions
🏉 Vintage visitors

THIS WEEK’S GUEST

HUGO GORDON

FULL TIME TAKES

Sheena Crean

A super match to attend, havent witnessed that atmos in the aviva in quite some time, but left feeling Leinster’s attack is soulless. Defensively strong but lacking ideas elsewhere. Joshua Kenny is a very exciting prospect, would be super to see him start a 6N game- maybe v Wales so that he doesnt get the same level of pressure overload that appears to be destroying SP (or perhaps SP simply isnt good enough, time will tell)

Eamon Saunders

That was close but great performance from Leinster considering we had so many big names missing

Cormac Mannion

Yet again we score early and then fail to do so for a huge chunk of the match. Gotta admire the grit but our ball presentation going into contact, our breakdown work and our ruck defence are utter garbage at the moment.

Fair play to JJ, he’s really growing into the role and it’s brilliant to see him and TOB burning players with sheer speed.

The third and fourth tries were great to see, pure instinct and well worked through the hands.

Balls of steel for Harry to nail that final kick but quite telling that Sam handed the ball to him.

La Rochelle wil be kicking themselves though. They butchered two certain tries

Conor Cronin

I’ll be doing a rewatch tomorrow before I judge this game completely, but I will say that from my seat it seemed like the ref had more impact on this game than he should have, and our choice to not go for points at 12-0 could’ve returned to catch us out, it would’ve put us 3 scores ahead and had an impact on their attitude to the game. Game management and captain decisions need a little attention for tight games like this

Vincent Duggan

Leinster lucky to get away with this one. La Rochell butchered 3 try attempts. Carley is an international standard ref he pulled Leinster for all the stuff they get away with in the URC, killing the ball a the breakdown and offside in midfield. Prendergast was responsible for two tries because of his inability to defend. Leinster were cut apart in midfield.

Tom Clarke

Given the injuries and then the injuries in the game that was a great win. A lot to work on defensively but the lads showed great fight and resilience.

Andrew Byrne

Looks like our depth at prop is better than we all thought. Fair play to Jerry Cahir off the bench, did a great job when he came on.

Billy Glynn

Two men playing their first H Cup two tries from kenny and brilliant from jerry Cahir AIL to H Cup 👏 great win with a bonus point can’t complain really.

Keith Bruce

Great game, La Rochelle didn’t take their chances and should have overrun Ireland, not looking good for Leinster in the six nations.

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CHAMPIONS CUP WRAP

Round 3

Castres 20–43 Bath
Edinburgh 26–24 Gloucester
Bulls 49–61 Bristol Bears
Clermont 21–33 Glasgow Warriors
Leinster 25–24 Stade Rochelais
Sale Sharks 26–10 Hollywoodbets Sharks
Scarlets 38–47 Pau
Leicester Tigers 57–14 Bayonne
Harlequins 61–10 Stormers
Toulon 27–25 Munster
Bordeaux 50–28 Northampton Saints
Saracens 20-14 Toulouse

Round 4

Friday 16 January 2026

Pau v Bulls

Bath v Edinburgh

Saturday 17 January 2026

Sharks v Clermont

Bayonne v Leinster

Stormers v Leicester

Toulouse v Sale

Munster v Castres

Gloucester v Toulon

Sunday 18 January 2026

Bristol v Bordeaux

Northampton v Scarlets

La Rochelle v Harlequins

Glasgow v Saracens

NEXT HARPIN’

TUESDAY

BONUS CHAT : “Final round permutations” (YouTube)

WEDNESDAY

80+ COLUMN (Substack)

487: Leinster v La Rochelle preview

ALSO AVAILABLE AS A PODCAST

Our guest : MARK JACKSON

Leinster: 15. Ciaran Frawley, 14. Tommy O’Brien, 13. Rieko Ioane, 12. Robbie Henshaw, 11. Joshua Kenny, 10. Sam Prendergast, 9. Jamison Gibson-Park

1. Paddy McCarthy, 2. Dan Sheehan, 3. Tom Clarkson, 4. Joe McCarthy, 5. James Ryan, 6. Jack Conan, 7. Josh van der Flier, 8. Caelan Doris (c)

16. Ronan Kelleher, 17. Jerry Cahir, 18. Andrew Sparrow, 19. Diarmuid Mangan, 20. Max Deegan, 21. Luke McGrath, 22. Harry Byrne, 23. Andrew Osborne

La Rochelle: 15. Dillyn Leyds, 14. Jack Nowell, 13. Jules Favre, 12. Simeli Daunivucu, 11. Davit Niniashvili, 10. Ihaia West, 9. Nolann le Garrec

1. Reda Wardi, 2. Tolu Latu, 3. Uini Atonio, 4. Charles Kante Samba, 5. Will Skelton, 6. Oscar Jegou, 7. Levani Botia, 8. Grégory Alldritt (c)

16. Quentin Lespiaucq, 17. Louis Penverne, 18. Aleksandre Kuntelia, 19. Kane Douglas, 20. Kirill Fraindt, 21. Thomas Berjon, 22. Antoine Hastoy, 23. Nathan Bollengier

Investec Champions Cup 25/26 – Round 3

Saturday, January 10, 2026

Aviva Stadium

KO 5:30pm

Live on : Premier Sports 1

Referee: Matthew Carley (Eng)

AR1: Adam Leal (Eng)

AR2: John Meredith (Eng)

TMO: Ian Tempest (Eng)

486 : Leinster v Connacht wrap

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

🏉 Attack on show

🏉 Pro-Tector

🏉 Pace on the wings

🏉 Ill discipline

🏉 Taking advantage

THIS WEEK’S GUEST

CONOR CRONIN

FULL TIME TAKES

Cormac Mannion

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

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URC WRAP

NEXT HARPIN’

TUESDAY

BONUS CHAT : “LEINSTER’S CHAMPIONS CUP POOL”

WEDNESDAY

80+ COLUMN

485: Leinster v Connacht preview

ALSO AVAILABLE AS A PODCAST

Our guest : NEIL “KEEGO” KEEGAN

www.keegolaughs.com

Apologies Up Front on Apple Podcasts

Leinster: 15. Ciarán Frawley, 14. Tommy O’Brien, 13. Hugh Cooney, 12. Charlie Tector, 11. Joshua Kenny, 10. Sam Prendergast, 9. Jamison Gibson-Park

1. Andrew Porter, 2. Dan Sheehan (c), 3. Thomas Clarkson, 4. Joe McCarthy, 5. Brian Deeny, 6. Diarmuid Mangan, 7. Will Connors, 8. Jack Conan

16. Gus McCarthy, 17. Jack Boyle, 18. Rabah Slimani, 19. Conor O’Tighearnaigh, 20. Max Deegan, 21. Josh van der Flier, 22. Luke McGrath, 23. Harry Byrne

Connacht: 15. Sam Gilbert, 14. Chay Mullins, 13. David Hawkshaw, 12. Bundee Aki, 11. Finn Treacy, 10. Josh Ioane, 9. Matthew Devine

1. Denis Buckley, 2. Dylan Tierney-Martin, 3. Finlay Bealham, 4. Joe Joyce, 5. David O’Connor, 6. Josh Murphy, 7. Cian Prendergast (c), 8. Sean Jansen

16. Eoin de Buitlear, 17. Billy Bohan, 18. Fiachna Barrett, 19. Darragh Murray, 20. Paul Boyle, 21. Ben Murphy, 22. Harry West, 23. Cathal Forde

BKT United Rugby Championship 25/26 – Round 9

Saturday, January 3, 2026

Aviva Stadium

KO 5:30pm

Live on : TG4, Premier Sports 1 & URC.tv

Referee: Andrew Brace (IRFU)

AR 1: Keane Davison (IRFU)

AR 2: Chris Lough (IRFU)

TMO: Olly Hodges (IRFU)

80+ column : December 31

ON THIS WEEK’S COLUMN…

WRAP OF A WRAP
REF BASHES REF
FRAWL-WAY
ROG ON HOW ‘TOULOUSE’
2026 6N HURDLES
WEATHERING THE STORMERS
HARPIN’ ON…2025 IN REVIEW
LEINSTER SQUAD UPDATE
TROLL PATROL
COMPETITION UPDATES (incl Celtic Challenge)
NEXT HARPIN’

WRAP OF A WRAP

Given the time of year that was in it I was prepared to do a “solo” wrap pod for the Munster match but thankfully Ciarán Duffy was able to step in.

Please do check out his fundraising page for the charity As I Am and contribute if you can, here is some info there but there’s a lot more on the end of the link…

As I Am carry out vital work in Ireland for autistic people and their families. This includes:

Providing necessary and appropriate help to austic people

Providing support for family members and carers of autistic people

Educating people on the realities of autistic people

Challenging stigma and disinformation around autism

Helping autistic people live a fulfilling life

REF BASHES REF

In that split-second, the last play of the first half, the referee lost the Munster players and the crowd.

Referee’s split-second wrong call at Thomond Park enough for Munster faithful to see red

Owen Doyle – Irish Times

Normally for these Front Five segments I go out of my way to find topics that are far removed from our Harpin’ feature matches since we cover those on the podcasts, but I really had to make an exception for this one.

On the Munster v Leinster wrap I did speak to the over the top reactions to the refereeing on the socials, ones that suggested the questionable calls only went against Munster, but then I read this article were Owen tells the keyboard warriors to hold his beer. A contributor in the Harpin WhatsApp group said it best…

I was frankly shocked to discover the author is a former head of referees for the IRFU, given how firmly he flung a neophyte referee under the bus

And the fact that it is a respected referee doing the criticism, particularly at a time when we are supposedly meant to be protecting officials from abuse, compounded all of my other complaints re the content…

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL COLUMN ON SUBSTACK

484 : Munster v Leinster wrap

27 December 2025; Josh van der Flier of Leinster celebrates in the closing moments of the United Rugby Championship match between Munster and Leinster at Thomond Park in Limerick. Photo by Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile

🏉 Defending ✅

🏉 Scrum ✅

🏉 Game management ✅

🏉 Attack plan❓

🏉 Discipline❓

THIS WEEK’S GUEST

CIARÁN DUFFY

Post to Post blog

Fundraiser link

FULL TIME TAKES

Richard Collumb

Close game, Munster pushed hard & Leinster defence improving. Harry best 10 we have.

Lorcán Murphy

A dogfight of a game which will stand to both teams and Ireland in the longer run. This was all about the result and who wanted it more

Dave Murray

Two very tough inter-pros and 9 points from them, we can’t complain about that. Our attack was very one dimensional, but its a tough defence that wins games in Thomond and we defended superbly. NB Leo with Zebo after the game was also a nice bonus

Louis Hoffman

Just about Fair result, few bruised bodies tomorrow. Ruck was a mess

Kevin Kelehan

Munster pushed Leinster bloody hard, Leinster defence was back where it needed to be. The second half against Ulster may be the time we say that Leinster’s season clicked and where the believe came to win when the chances aren’t there.

Gavin Little

Scrums are a mystery… we win penalty after penalty and Munster don’t get penalised, then in the second half the ref calls “use it” almost immediately on every scrum completely nullifying our advantage

Christy O’Connor

Started off brilliant and the intensity was great, it dropped off as the game went on though. Our defense was great and our attack is still very one dimensional.

The highlight of the night was Leo absolutely ripping Zebo in the interview after the game.

Gerald Williamson

The Leinster defense was impressive. It was a close game with not much free flowing Rugby due to the tight marking. The Ref did not have a bad game.

Get in the conversation yourself by leaving

your own thoughts each week after the full time whistle

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URC WRAP

NEXT HARPIN’

TUESDAY

BONUS CHAT : “2025 YEAR IN REVIEW” (YOUTUBE)

WEDNESDAY

80+ COLUMN (SUBSTACK)

483: Munster v Leinster preview

ALSO AVAILABLE AS A PODCAST

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

BKT United Rugby Championship 25/26 – Round 8

Friday, December 26, 2025

Thomond Park

KO 7:45pm

Live on : Premier Sports 1 & URC.tv

Referee: Peter Martin (IRFU)

AR 1: Keane Davison (IRFU)

AR 2: Andrew Fogarty (IRFU)

TMO: Mark Patton (IRFU)