ULSTER ENDED A 14-year wait for an away win over Leinster, in March, as they triumphed over Joe Schmidt’s men at the RDS.
Ulster lock Iain Henderson spoke of the raised intensity that was required to knock Leinster off by a score of 22-18. They brought the same intensity to the Pro12 final, two months later, but Leinster were ready and in cup final mode. Successive league defeats were avenged and Schmidt ended his tenure with more silverware.
Leinster have a new coach, in Matt O’Connor, and he insists history will play little bearing in this evening’s encounter. “It’s pivotal in the league, it’s pivotal in the momentum building in to the next inter-provincial game and then ultimately the Heineken Cup [round 5 and 6],” the Australian told TheScore.ie. “Both teams understand the importance of it. We need to put out a really good performance that is indicative of winning the game.”
From the mid December highs of trouncing Northampton 40-7 at Franklin’s Gardens to end of year woes against the Saints and away to Edinburgh, O’Connor’s Leinster have been unable to churn out consistent highs.
“They have been a disappointing few weeks,” he admitted. “We’ve had some robust conversations [on Monday] in relation to what went wrong. The pleasing thing is that we’ve been below par; we haven’t played anywhere near how we know we can and we’ve been within a play of winning the game.
To be playing at the Aviva to win the game on the last play, to be playing at Edinburgh to win the game is positive, but we’ve’ve got to make sure we’re better than that over the course of the game.”
O’Connor may have to readjust his perspective on what constitutes positive but, the fact is, Leinster are well in the hunt in Europe and the Pro12. Mark Anscombe, his counterpart at Ulster, regularly comes across as dissatisfied even after his team win. Such was the case after ‘pretty damn horrible’ Ulster’s 13-6 win over Zebre last Friday. O’Connor expects an improvement from this evening’s visitors to the RDS.
It was probably a fact that Ulster were a little bit off. They were probably a little bit complacent the conditions weren’t great and they thought they were going to do it easy. Zebre have shown over the past six weeks that they’re a better side than people have given them credit for. I don’t think it was much more than that. Ulster still had the composure to get the result at the end of the day and they’ve’ve been in pretty good form.”
With Leo Cullen expected to be confirmed as the Leinster forwards coach from next season on, O’Connor acknowledges the positive coaching appointment while lamenting the loss of an influential lock.
“He’s had a pretty good innings to be fair, so we’ll be looking to bolster the group in that regard and making sure we have quality locks to replace the man has been Leo,” he said.
– Additional reporting by Sean Farrell
