480 : Leicester Tigers v Leinster wrap

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

🏉 Reiko’s 1st start

🏉 Joe McC

🏉 Defensive concerns

🏉 The road ahead

🏉 Paddy McC

THIS WEEK’S GUEST

HUGO GORDON

FULL TIME TAKES

Cian O’Muilleoir (WhatsApp)

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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CHAMPIONS CUP WRAP

ROUND 2

Leicester Tigers 15–23 Leinster

Stormers 42–21 La Rochelle

Clermont 14–35 Sale Sharks

Sharks 28-23 Saracens

Munster 31–3 Gloucester

Bordeaux-Bègles 50–21 Scarlets

Glasgow Warriors 28–21 Toulouse

Cardiff 29–26 Ulster

Castres 33–0 Edinburgh

Harlequins 68-14 Bayonne

Northampton Saints 50-5 Bulls

Toulon 45-34 Bath

Bristol Bears 61-12 Pau

Round 3

Friday, 9 January 2026

Castres v Bath

Edinburgh v Gloucester

Saturday, 10 January 2026

Bulls v Bristol

Clermont v Glasgow

Leinster v La Rochelle

Sale Sharks v Sharks

Scarlets v Pau

Leicester Tigers v Bayonne

Sunday, 11 January 2026

Harlequins v Stormers

Toulon v Munster

Bordeaux-Bègles v Northampton Saints

Saracens v Toulouse

NEXT HARPIN’

TUESDAY

BONUS CHAT : “THE RISE AND RISE OF PADDY McCARTHY” (YOUTUBE)

WEDNESDAY

80+ COLUMN (SUBSTACK)

AI doing me wrong, Mad Dog & Englishmen, opinions on opinions

Saturday, December 13, 2025

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.

CLICK HERE FOR THE ENTIRE ARTICLE ON SUBSTACK

479: Leicester Tigers v Leinster preview

Our guest : MARK JACKSON

LEINSTER :

15. Jimmy O’Brien14. Tommy O’Brien 13. Rieko Ioane 12. Robbie Henshaw

11. James Lowe 10. Harry Byrne 9. Jamison Gibson-Park

1. Paddy McCarthy 2. Rónan Kelleher 3. Tadhg Furlong 4. Joe McCarthy

5. James Ryan 6. Jack Conan 7. Josh van der Flier 8. Caelan Doris (c)

16. Dan Sheehan 17. Jack Boyle 18. Thomas Clarkson 19. Diarmuid Mangan

20. Max Deegan 21. Luke McGrath 22. Sam Prendergast 23. Ciarán Frawley

LEICESTER TIGERS

15 Freddie Steward 14 Adam Radwan 13 Will Wand

12 Solomone Kata 11 Ollie Hassell-Collins 10 Billy Searle 9 Tom Whiteley

1 Nicky Smith 2 Jamie Blamire 3 Joe Heyes 4 Cameron Henderson

5 Harry Wells 6 James Thompson 7 Tommy Reffell (c) 8 Joaquin Moro

16 Finn Theobald Thomas 17 Archie van der Flier 18 Will Hurd 19 Tom Manz

20 Sam Williams 21 Ollie Allan 22 Orlando Bailey 23 Joseph Woodward

Investec Champions Cup 25/26 – Round 2

Friday, December 12, 2025

Mattioli Woods Welford Road

KO 8pm

Live on : Premier Sports 1

Referee – Pierre Brousset (Fra)

AR1 – Vincent Blasco Baque (Fra)

AR2 – Julien Caulier (Fra)

TMO – Tual Trainini (Fra)

80+ column : December 10

ON THIS WEEK’S COLUMN…

WRAP OF A WRAP
EXAMINING THE REC-AGE
ROSS AT GLOS
CHUMP MORE LIKE
THE CUT OF THEIR GIB
RWC2027 DRAW RIGGED?
HARPIN’ ON…LEINSTER’S SEASON SO FAR
WRAP OF A WRAPPED
LEINSTER SQUAD UPDATE
TROLL PATROL
COMPETITION UPDATES (incl Challenge Cup)
NEXT HARPIN’

WRAP OF A WRAP

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.

ICYMI click here to check out the pod.

EXAMINING THE REC-AGE

…unless McMillan is prepared to live off whatever is left over when Leinster’s needs are fulfilled, he will soon find himself becoming the fall guy

Munster? Not what we are used to.

David Corkery – RuckThis.ie

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.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL

COLUMN OVER ON SUBSTACK

Harpin’ on…Leinster’s season so far

“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?”

478 : Leinster v Harlequins wrap

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

🏉 Attack consistency

🏉 Quins successes

🏉 Day of Reiko-ning*

🏉 Defence & discipline

🏉 First half end game

* = hat-tip Ciarán Duffy

THIS WEEK’S GUEST

TOM COLEMAN

FULL TIME TAKES

Christy O’Connor

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

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in Leinster & Ireland matches on our Facebook page

CHAMPIONS CUP WRAP

ROUND 1

Sale Sharks 21–26 Glasgow

Bayonne 17–26 Stormers

Saracens 47–10 Clermont

Bulls 33–46 Bordeaux

La Rochelle 39–20 Leicester Tigers

Leinster 45–28 Harlequins

Scarlets 16–17 Bristol Bears

Bath 40–14 Munster

Pau 27–35 Northampton Saints

Toulouse 28–12 Sharks

Gloucester 14–14 Castres

Edinburgh 33–20 Toulon

ROUND 2

Friday, 12 December 2025
Leicester Tigers v Leinster — 20:00

Saturday, 13 December 2025
Stormers v La Rochelle — 13:00

Clermont v Sale Sharks — 15:15

Sharks v Saracens — 15:15

Munster v Gloucester — 17:30

Bordeaux-Bègles v Scarlets — 17:30

Glasgow Warriors v Toulouse — 20:00

Sunday, 14 December 2025
Castres v Edinburgh — 13:00

Harlequins v Bayonne — 15:15

Northampton Saints v Bulls — 15:15

Toulon v Bath — 17:30

Bristol Bears v Pau — 17:30

NEXT HARPIN’

TUESDAY

BONUS CHAT : “LEINSTER’S SEASON SO FAR”

WEDNESDAY

80+ COLUMN

477 : Leinster v Harlequins preview

ALSO AVAILABLE AS A PODCAST

Our guest : MARK JACKSON

LEINSTER : 15. Jimmy O’Brien 14. Tommy O’Brien 13. Garry Ringrose 12. Ciarán Frawley 11. Jordan Larmour 10. Sam Prendergast 9. Jamison Gibson-Park

1. Paddy McCarthy 2. Dan Sheehan 3. Thomas Clarkson 4. RG Snyman 5. Joe McCarthy 6. Jack Conan 7. Josh van der Flier 8. Caelan Doris (c)

16. Rónan Kelleher 17. Jack Boyle 18. Tadhg Furlong 19. Diarmuid Mangan 20. Max Deegan 21. Luke McGrath 22. Harry Byrne 23. Rieko Ioane

HARLEQUINS : 15. Cameron Anderson, 14. Cassius Cleaves, 13. Oscar Beard, 12. Luke Northmore, 11. Cadan Murley (c), 10. Jarrod Evans, 9. Will Porter

1. Boris Wenger, 2. Jack Walker, 3. Harry Williams, 4. Kieran Treadwell, 5. Stephan Lewies, 6. Zach Carr, 7. Will Evans, 8. Tom Lawday

16. George Turner, 17. Will Hobson, 18. Pedro Delgado, 19. Joe Launchbury, 20. Lucas Schmid, 21. Lucas Friday, 22. Jamie Benson, 23. Bryn Bradley

Investec Champions Cup 25/26 – Round 1

Saturday, December 6, 2025

Aviva Stadium

KO 5:30pm

Live on : Premier Sports 1

Referee : Craig Evans (WRU)

AR1 : Adam Jones (WRU)

AR2 : Ben Breakspear (WRU)

TMO : Keith David (WRU)

Harpin’ on…the Champions’ Cup contenders

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?“

476 : Dragons v Leinster wrap

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

🏉 Penny for our thoughts

🏉 Rainy night in Newport

🏉 Attack plans

🏉 JJ & RG

🏉 Dodgy discipline

THIS WEEK’S GUEST

DAVID CORDIAL

FULL TIME TAKES

Jackie McEachern

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

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in Leinster & Ireland matches on our Facebook page

URC WRAP

NEXT HARPIN’

TUESDAY

BONUS CHAT : “CHAMPIONS CUP CONTENDERS”

WEDNESDAY

80+ COLUMN

Dragons deposing dungeons, dodgy decisions & dubious D4 debates

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.

“But what about our Stranger Things marathon?”

“Was that tonight?”

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ARTICLE ON SUBSTACK