ROBBIE HENSHAW believes Leinster will need to be prepared for a game of “kick tennis” when they face Leicester Tigers at the quarter-final stage of the Champions Cup at Welford Road this Saturday (kick-off 5.30pm).
A clash of the pace-setters in the United Rugby Championship and the Gallagher Premiership, this is set to be the biggest test of Leinster’s resolve in Europe thus far this season. Leicester have registered an impressive haul of 23 tries from five games to date in the 2021/22 Champions Cup, but with Leinster having crossed the whitewash an astonishing 41 times, Henshaw isn’t anticipating an overly cavalier approach from the Tigers.
“They’re a very pragmatic team in terms of how they go about their kicking game. How they apply pressure, in the sense of going through their nine and their 10. Going aerially for their kicks. They stick to it and as a player, it can probably be a bit of a frustration sometimes if it’s a kick tennis game,” the Ireland international explained at a Leinster media conference on Monday.
“For us, we just need to make sure we’re patient and when we get our opportunities, we’ll be able to take them. It might be early, it might be late in the game that it might open up a bit. When it comes to the kick tennis, that’s where, as a player, you need to be patient. It’s hard work as well, there’s a lot of running up and back. Again, we just need to be patient.”
While the presence of George Ford and Freddie Burns (brother of Ireland international Billy) means it is unlikely Dan Lancaster will feature in Leicester’s matchday 23, his father Stuart is doing everything in his power to plot their downfall. Working for Leinster as a senior coach since 2016, the elder Lancaster wasn’t part of the eastern province’s recent trip to South Africa for URC showdowns against Cell C Sharks and DHL Stormers.
Instead, he remained at Leinster’s training base in UCD along with a separate group of players – the majority of whom are expected to see significant game time at Welford Road on Saturday. Henshaw was one of those who missed out on travelling to the southern hemisphere, but the former England head coach ensured there was no slacking off under his watch.
“We’ve been getting our legs ran off us by Stuart, which hasn’t been enjoyable! We’ve done a lot of fitness work, a lot of contact work because we know Leicester are a big side with big ball carriers. We’ve been sharp there. Just a lot of kick-pressure stuff, getting ready for that aerial battle.
“George Ford is going to be sending a lot of kicks down our channels and the likes of Ben Youngs, [Richard] Wigglesworth with their box kicks. Doing a lot of practising on that. There’s been a lot of running and a lot of hard training which has been good. We’ve kind of treated it like a top-up block. To top-up our fitness and make sure we’re ready to go for Saturday.”
Having enjoyed a stellar 2020/21 season for Leinster, Ireland and the British & Irish Lions, the current campaign has been quite a frustrating one for Henshaw. Due to a combination of factors, he has only featured six times for Leinster in the present term and started just two of the eight games Ireland played across the Autumn Nations Series and the Six Nations Championship.
This partly fuelled his excellent display in a Round-of-16 second leg demolition of Connacht at the Aviva Stadium on 15 April, when he scored a brace of tries as Leinster ultimately shook off a difficult encounter in Galway a week earlier to defeat his former side 82-41 on aggregate.
“I haven’t played a whole lot. It has been an up and down one for me, kind of stop-start. Definitely a bit of frustration, but again I just have to stick to the process. Trust that it will come good and have a strong finish to the season. That’s what I’ve been looking forward to. Connacht was a funny one,” Henshaw acknowledged.
“There was that element of a bit of frustration from that game and definitely brought it through to the Aviva. We knew we had to do better than what we did in Galway. Thankfully, we did up it a few gears and that showed in our performance.”