Leinster coach Tyler Bleyendaal: 'Sam Prendergast is his own harshest critic'

Irish Examiner

2 days ago

Sam Prendergast's season won't end in Croke Park on Saturday. A two-game Ireland tour to Georgia and Portugal awaits in July, after all, but the upcoming BKT URC Grand Final with the Bulls will go a long way to determining how his breakthrough campaign is framed.
Behind Ciaran Frawley and Ross Byrne for the No.10 jersey at provincial level last summer, the now 22-year-old was thought to be in a similar situation at Test level where Jack Crowley was very much the man in possession.
That changed in November when Andy Farrell turned to the up-and-comer and faith has been kept in him ever since. He approaches the weekend's decider with the Bulls having played eight times for his country and 15 for his club.
All bar three of those appearances have come as starts and he has played deep into most of his games to boot. Add in his three starts for Emerging Ireland in South Africa last autumn and the workload Prendergast has been handed is obvious.
The out-half's abilities as a playmaker are clear and his kicking from the hand has been excellent with it. The flip side has been too much flimsy defending and a success rate off the tee that just won't cut it long-term.
He left eleven points behind him against Glasgow in last week's semi-final but Tyler Bleyendaal, his attack coach at Leinster, can relate given he knows a thing about good and bad days as a No.10 from his own experiences with Crusaders and Munster.
'Jeez, being a kicker myself and sometimes you have a bad day. Sometimes you have a rubbish warm-up, a great game. Sometimes you have a great warm-up, a rubbish game. But he was back to work [Monday] kicking a lot of balls. As far as I'm aware, he wasn't kicking yesterday, but you never know.
'He might have been at home nudging a few. Like I said, he puts in the work, prepares well. He's his harshest critic, but he's got a great workrate. This week is another week. He's enjoying engaging with the planning of the week and putting in his own skill development as well.'
More than one Leinster player and coach has insisted that they are blind to opinions in traditional or social media, but none have generated anything like as much debate or dissension as the youngster from Kildare this last eight months.
Bleyendaal thought Prendergast played well last week against the Warriors, goalkicking blemishes aside. Leinster applied a lot of pressure and the Kiwi felt that much of that came from the leadership shown on the pitch by their ten.
As for any toll from those 26 games and counting… 'I don't think there's any ill-effects. He's getting through the season fine. I don't look at him and think he's getting beaten up or he's slowing down. I feel like he turns up every week, he's got good energy and he's young. He recovers well.'
Prendergast certainly has the scope to improve as a player. Alongside him through most of this period has been Jamison Gibson-Park who, at the age of 33, is still operating at the absolute pinnacle of the game at scrum-half.
The No.9's performance in the last four was exceptional, not least two fizzing skip passes along the Glasgow line to play teammates in for fall-over tries in a 37-19 win. He must be a dream for any attack coach to work with.
"He takes a lot of ownership around it, which is great. I don't think I can dictate to him to throw those passes or not. He's very instinctive, but he's got the skillset and more often than not, executes. So it's not a copy and paste, you can't take what he does and apply it to another nine necessarily.
'Very grateful when he's on the park. He is a different dynamic that teams have to defend. Sometimes I'm not sure what he is going to do, but more often than not he has got a good connection with the players. He just plays like he enjoys rugby, which is nice to see.'
Leinster will go into the decider as favourites against a Bulls team that beat them in the semi-final of this competition in 2023, in Dublin, and last season, but Leo Cullen is still waiting on fitness updates on four of their recently-named British and Irish Lions.
Josh van der Flier, Garry Ringrose, Hugo Keenan and Tadhg Furlong all missed the semi-final, the first of them with a hamstring problem and the other three with calf issues. Van der Flier and Ringrose are the two most likely to be ready in time.