ROB KEARNEY KNOWS that Leinster can’t afford to carry any passengers in their Heineken Cup survival match against Scarlets.
The full-back made his long-awaited return to action last week after more than three months on the sidelines and can deliver a timely injection of experience if he starts in the RDS on Saturday.
Back-to-back defeats against a red-hot Clermont Auvergne mean qualification for the knockout stages is now out of Leinster’s hands, though a four-try bonus point would give the European champions a glimmer of hope heading into the final round of pool matches.
But Kearney refuses to get sucked into “press” talk and is focused instead on making an instant impact if given the chance.
“The lungs were blowing a little bit after 50, 60 minutes last week but my back felt good and that probably had to be the priority for me,” he said at Thursday’s media briefing.
It’s not ideal as I say but I’ve a lot of good players around me there if I take the field at the weekend. There has to be a little bit of onus on me too to bring something to the game because I’ve missed those last four group stage matches.There’s a little bit of pressure but that can only be good for you at times.
Isa Nacewa scored the only try when the sides met on matchday two back in October, a game which ended in a 20-13 win for Leinster. Simon Easterby’s men remain rooted to the bottom of Pool Five with only two losing bonus points to show from their four games but Kearney says Leinster can’t take anything for granted.
“To be perfectly honest, we haven’t spoken about a bonus point at all this week. We haven’t changed game plans. The way we play, we know that if we do everything to the best of our ability and are really accurate, then we’ll score tries and we’ll win games which obviously has to be the most important thing for us.
He added: “They’re a very strong defensive side and I think our try-scoring record for the past couple of months hasn’t been superb either. We know we’re up against it. To say that we need four tries, probably you can’t call that just yet but it’s funny how the four tries is much more of a press driven thing.
As I said we haven’t spoken a huge amount about it. It’s pretty disrespectful maybe if we were behind the scenes speaking like that and that’s not the type of team that we try to be. We’re just going to try and play.
