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The 42
03-05-2025
- Sport
- The 42
Leinster primed to book final berth but Saints will land some shots
LEINSTER FIND THEMSELVES in the peculiar position of aiming to achieve something no team has ever managed, while at the same time striving to end a long unwanted run in the same competition. Beat Northampton Saints at Aviva Stadium in today's Champions Cup semi-final [KO 5.30pm, RTÉ 2/Premier Sports 1], and Leo Cullen's team will become the first side to reach four successive Champions Cup finals. It's an impressive feat, but one they would gladly trade to have won at least one of the previous three deciders. Failure this year feels almost unthinkable given the lay of the land. Jacques Nienaber's ideas are now fully imbedded and understood by those tasked with delivering them on the pitch. The additions of Jordie Barrett, RG Snyman and Rabah Slimani make them a more formidable outfit than they were 12 months ago. So too the acceleration of players like Sam Prendergast and Tommy O'Brien, who were only hovering around the fringes of the first 23 a year ago. Both start today, as does Snyman, while Barrett and Slimani are held in reserve. That highlights how Leinster are not the team they were when Northampton came to town for a Croke Park semi-final last year. Seven of today's starting 15 – namely Hugo Keenan (who was preparing for the Olympics) O'Brien, Garry Ringrose (injured), Prendergast, Cian Healy (now part of a bench experiment with Andrew Porter), Snyman and Max Deegan – did not start this fixture 12 months ago. The starting XV looks stronger and a reinforced bench has become a point of difference. Max Deegan starts for Leinster. James Crombie / INPHO James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO Leinster's house looks in fine shape as others have shipped damage to their structures. La Rochelle have already fallen off amid a long stretch of poor form. Defending champions Toulouse are without Antoine Dupont, Peato Mauvaka, Thomas Ramos and Blair Kinghorn. Bordeax-Begles are a supreme attacking outfit but one that leaks far too many scores at the other end. Northampton's team announcement for today included a list of 12 injured players. Advertisement The province haven't won this competition since 2018 and yet have placed themselves as the team to beat. As we all know, they scored a whopping 114 points across their round of 16 and quarter-final wins over Harlequins and Glasgow while conceding zero. Today's opponents gave them a scare in Drumcondra last season thanks to a late flurry of scores, but have not been the same force. Premiership champions in 2024, the Saints have won just seven from 15 in the league and sit seventh in the table. Weigh it up any way and the expectation is that Leinster will win this one with room to spare, but expect Northampton to come out swinging. Their excellent young out-half Fin Smith is the real deal and forms a classy half-back partnership with Alex Mitchell. Fiery flanker Henry Pollock will also relish this stage and comes to Dublin braced for the toughest test of his young career. Winger Tommy Freeman has registered at least one try in each of his last nine starts for club and country. Northampton have a strong half-back pairing in Fin Smith and Alex Mitchell. Juan Gasparini / INPHO Juan Gasparini / INPHO / INPHO Where the Saints are perhaps lacking is up front. There has been a major Courtney Lawes-shaped hole in their pack since the former England international joined Brive. Lewis Ludlam, Alex Moon, Alex Waller and Sam Matavesi have also moved on. Leinster hold a clear advantage in this area and no matter what the Saints can conjure, it's hard to see them living with those Leinster reinforcements. Yet Northampton's attack remains a weapon that can cut Leinster open. They'll come to Dublin looking to use their kicking game to beat the blitz – as it eventually did last year – while also running the ball when the opportunity arises. 'They obviously want to attack, they want to play with tempo, they want to keep the ball in play pretty high,' says Leinster captain Caelan Doris. 'We experienced that particularly in the second half last year. I think one of the learnings from us from that game is the need to continue to play and to attack the game. There was maybe a little bit of just trying to eke out the clock to a certain extent, even subconsciously, maybe. So having guys like Jack (Conan) and Jordie (Barrett) on the bench to come on and add something will help with that.' The ruthless hammerings of Quins and Glasgow suggest Leinster's mentality is just fine. So often we've seen Leinster (or Ireland) build a healthy score only to slip off across the final quarter. This season Leinster have been ravenous and refused to take the foot off the throat of their opponents, even when the result is long beyond doubt. Four of their eight tries v Glasgow came after the half-time break. It was six of nine v Harlequins and four of seven in the final pool game against Bath. Across those five halves of rugby not one point was conceded. You get the sense Leinster enjoy that defensive return even more than the big scorelines. 'There's definitely a feeling that it has improved,' Doris says of Leinter's defence. 'You've seen that with some of the results we've had, obviously in the round of 16 and the quarter, not conceding anything, but this is going to be a much bigger challenge for our defence. Guys are aware of that and ready for it. 'This is obviously where we want to be. There's a good buzz around the club at the minute between the lads coming back from South Africa off the back of the win and a few good performances we've put in. 'There's big excitement. Some guys haven't played in a couple of weeks, we've trained hard over the last couple of weeks and a bit of an opportunity, there's always a few niggles at this stage in the season, so get on top of the body and when the body's good, it's easier to be there mentally. So yeah, looking forward to getting stuck in.' LEINSTER: Hugo Keenan; Tommy O'Brien, Garry Ringrose, Robbie Henshaw, James Lowe; Sam Prendergast, Jamison Gibson-Park, Cian Healy, Dan Sheehan, Tadhg Furlong; RG Snyman, Joe McCarthy; Max Deegan, Josh van der Flier, Caelan Doris (capt). Replacements: Ronan Kelleher, Andrew Porter, Rabah Slimani, Ryan Baird, Jack Conan, Luke McGrath, Ross Byrne, Jordie Barrett. NORTHAMPTON SAINTS: James Ramm; Tommy Freeman, Fraser Dingwall (capt), Rory Hutchinson, Tom Litchfield; Fin Smith, Alex Mitchell; Emmanuel Iyogun, Curtis Langdon, Trevor Davison; Temo Mayanavanua, Alex Coles; Josh Kemeny, Henry Pollock, Juarno Augustus. Replacements: Henry Walker, Tom West, Elliot Millar-Mills, Tom Lockett, Chunya Munga, Angus Scott-Young, Tom James, Tom Seabrook. Referee: Pierre Brousset (Fra)
Irish Times
01-05-2025
- Sport
- Irish Times
Jordie Barrett expected to start on bench for Leinster's game against Northampton
Leinster are expected to restore some of their frontline Irish players who were used as replacements in the 52-0 quarter-final win over Glasgow, such as Dan Sheehan, Caelan Doris and Robbie Henshaw when the team for Saturday's Champions Cup semi-final against Northampton at the Aviva Stadium (kick-off 5.30pm) is announced at lunchtime on Friday. This means that despite his superb man of the match display in that quarter-final win, it seems likely that Jordie Barrett will revert to his role as an impact replacement along with Andrew Porter, with Leinster again apparently opting to start Cian Healy. Max Deegan and Tommy O'Brien are again expected to be rewarded for their strong form of late by being retained at blindside flanker and rightwinger respectively, where they started against Glasgow. Ryan Baird, who was ruled out of the quarter-final but completed the full 80 minutes in the defeat by the Scarlets last week, and Jack Conan, who started the quarter-final only to be forced off in the 15th minute, are likely to be named on the bench, especially in the continuing absence of the injured James Ryan. Add in Ronan Kelleher, Rabah Slimani, Luke McGrath and Ross Byrne, and Barrett would thus complete a very impactful bench. When playing the full 80 against Glasgow, Barrett had 15 carries, made 40 metres, had 17 passes, made four offloads, five kicks out of hand and was Leinster's second highest tackler with 14, while he also won three turnovers. READ MORE Max Deegan of Leinster dives in to score against Glasgow. Photograph: Charles McQuillan/Getty Leinster arrive at this defining endgame to the season in reasonably good shape, and although most of Northampton's leading frontliners such as Alex Mitchell have returned to fitness and form recently, their Director of Rugby Phil Dowson has confirmed that English fullback George Furbank will not be available this weekend. Furbank suffered a broken arm in the eye-catching pool win away win against the Bulls in Loftus Versfeld in December and made his long-awaited return from the bench against Castres Olympique in the quarter-finals three weeks ago. Furbank had to replace George Hendy, who suffered a shoulder injury, in the opening five minutes against Castres and scored one of the Saints' seven tries. But Furbank's arm has been in pain ever since and ahead of this weekend's trip to Dublin, Dowson said: 'George won't play this weekend. He's struggling to get over that arm break and into contact so he won't be available this week.' Furbank has missed Northampton's ensuing Premiership wins away to Newcastle (35-34) and at home to Bristol (48-31) which has given them real momentum going into Saturday's game, which is a repeat of the sides' semi-final meeting last year when Leinster scraped through to a third successive final by 20-17. However, whereas that game was an 82,300-capacity crowd at Croke Park, despite being at the Aviva Stadium this semi-final is not a sell-out, with ticket sales at the 40,000-mark. The tournament organisers, EPCR, deny that they had more control over the pricing and distribution of this semi-final, having drawn criticism from Leinster for their overpricing of tickets three seasons ago when the semi-final against the mighty Toulouse, despite a three-week gap from the quarter-finals, drew an attendance of 42,076. The EPCR say that they oversee all their semi-finals 'in conjunction with stakeholders', namely Leinster and the GAA last year, and Leinster and the IRFU this year. But for whatever reason, tickets were both overpriced and unbalanced by comparison this year. For example, within 12 minutes of tickets going on sale for this semi-final, all available children's tickets (from €30 upwards as against €18 last year) had been bought. With ticket sales barely above 30,000 at the start of the week, that mistakes have again been made was tacitly admitted by the EPCR when they released tickets with reduced prices this week, but the cheapest of those are still €42. By comparison, Sunday's semi-final in the Nouveau Stade de Bordeaux (also known as the Matmut Atlantique) between Bordeaux Bègles and Toulouse is a 42,000 sell-out. But the reigning, six-time champions have been dealt several more injury blows this week in addition to long-term casualty Antoine Dupont. Scottish fullback Blair Kinghorn suffered a knee injury in Toulouse's win over Castres last weekend which has sidelined him for an estimated three weeks and earlier this week, hooker Peato Mauvaka ruptured his ACL in training so ending his season and much of next season as well. Mauvaka has supplanted Julien Marchand as first-choice hooker for both Toulouse and France in the last two seasons. Now, having suffered a calf injury earlier this week, goal-kicking fullback Thomas Ramos is considered highly doubtful for Sunday's semi-final according to the Midi Olimpique website. A key figure in Toulouse winning four European and two French titles since 2019, Ramos would constitute another huge loss for the holders, be it his world-class goal-kicking, game-breaking abilities and leadership. The Argentinian Juan Cruz Mallia would likely start at fullback were Ramos ruled out.
BBC News
16-02-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
Ireland 'A' name 29-man squad for England encounter
Leinster's Max Deegan will captain Ireland 'A' against England 'A' at Ashton Gate in Bristol on 23 February (13:00 GMT). Back row Deegan is one of six players - alongside forwards Fineen Wycherley, Oli Jager, Tom O'Toole and backs Harry Byrne and Shane Daly - to have been capped at Test level by Ireland. The squad also includes 12 players who were part of the Emerging Ireland tour to South Africa in September, including Ulster's Zac Ward and Jude 29-man panel is made up of 11 Leinster players, eight from Munster, seven from Connacht and three from Ulster."I am hugely excited to work with such a talented group of players and coaches and we're all looking forward to the opportunity to represent our country in Bristol this weekend," said Ireland 'A' head coach Mike Prendergast. "It is an experienced group with a number of capped senior internationals named alongside players who have featured for Emerging Ireland and for their provinces in recent months."Munster coach Prendergast added: "The standard, whenever you pull on an Ireland jersey, is to perform to the best of your ability and we believe that we have a good blend of talented players who will look to take this opportunity to impress the national and provincial coaches."Sunday's game presents a huge opportunity against what will be a well-drilled England side who boast a lot of Premiership experience in their ranks. It is a task that we will approach with a positive frame of mind." Ireland 'A' squad (Club/province/Test caps)Forwards (16): Jack Aungier (Clontarf FC/Connacht), Diarmuid Barron (Garryowen/Munster), James Culhane (UCD RFC/Leinster), Max Deegan (Lansdowne/Leinster) (captain) (2), Brian Gleeson (Garryowen FC/Munster), Oli Jager (Munster) (1), Sean Jansen (Connacht), Alex Kendellen (UCC RFC/Munster), Paddy McCarthy (Dublin University FC/Leinster), Darragh Murray (Buccaneers RFC/Connacht), Evan O'Connell (UL Bohemian RFC/Munster), Conor O'Tighearnaigh (UCD RFC/Leinster), Tom O'Toole (Ballynahinch/Ulster) (16), Stephen Smyth (Old Wesley RFC/Leinster), Alex Soroka (Clontarf FC/Leinster), Fineen Wycherley (Young Munster/Munster) (1).Backs (13): Shayne Bolton (Connacht), Harry Byrne (UCD/Leinster) (4), Hugh Cooney (Clontarf/Leinster), Shane Daly (Cork Constitution/Munster) (2), Cathal Forde (Corinthians/Connacht), Hugh Gavin (Galwegians RFC/Connacht), Fintan Gunne (Terenure College RFC/Leinster), Ben Murphy (Clontarf/Connacht), Ben O'Connor (UCC RFC/Munster), Tommy O'Brien (UCD RFC/Leinster), Andrew Osborne (Naas RFC/Leinster), Jude Postlethwaite (City of Armagh RFC/Ulster), Zac Ward (Ballynahinch RFC/Ulster).Ireland 'A' management team Mike Prendergast (head coach/attack coach), Jimmy Duffy (forwards), Sean O'Brien (defence), Mark Sexton (backs/assistant attack coach), Colm Tucker (scrum/breakdown).
