SPEAKING SHORTLY AFTER watching his team edge a thrilling interpro derby at Thomond Park on a 20-19 scoreline, Leo Cullen admitted the home side, Munster, had looked the more cohesive of the two teams.
That made the manner of Leinster’s victory all the more impressive. Early in the second half, the visitors trailed 14-6 and had a man in the bin. Across the next 10 minutes, they powered into a 20-14 lead thanks to close-range tries from Scott Penny and Dan Sheehan to leave Thomond Park with yet another win over the great rivals.
That’s now four on the bounce in Limerick for Leinster, and 10 in their last 11 against Munster – and this was a Leinster team without Johnny Sexton, Jamison Gibson-Park, Tadhg Furlong, Caelan Doris, Josh van der Flier, Jimmy O’Brien, James Ryan, Jason Jenkins and Charlie Ngatai, to name a few.
Others stepped up in their place. Cian Healy played 60 minutes at tighthead, Nick McCarthy was handed a first start of the season at scrum-half and Jamie Osborne delivered another impressive outing – including one sumptuous second-half offload – at inside centre.
One of Cullen’s more interesting selections saw the impressive Joe McCarthy form a new second-row partnership with Ryan Baird – who enjoyed some good moments and called the Leinster lineout, but looked less impactful than he did in his recent displays in the backrow
“It was a new experience for Ryan, again just putting himself into that situation where he’s leading the forwards in terms of the lineout piece,” Cullen said.
I thought Joe was very good in terms of his physicality. He throws himself into everything, Joe, which is great. But (it was) a good physical performance from him. To have that against that Munster pack which has been together, they haven’t really changed their team a huge amount, so they have that cohesion there.”
It was another reminder of how Leinster’s superior squad depth allows them to tweak and twiddle with their selections and still pull off results like this one. Even Cullen, often quick to play down a big win, was impressed, singling out 35-year-old Healy for his work on the tighthead side of the scrum.
“Cian has a remarkable mindset really at this stage of his career,” he continued.
“To be able to flip across to the other side of the scrum after being a loosehead for the previous, what, 15-odd years, but that’s just an indication of the sort of mindset that he has, generally speaking.
“Ryan [Baird], again, brilliant athlete. Where he’s going to play his best rugby, whether he’s in the second-row or at ’6′, he’s a phenomenal athlete. I think he’s just going to go from strength-to-strength hopefully.
So, plenty of positives. When we were putting this team together, we wanted to ask some questions of the group. Even though it wasn’t perfect, there was lots of positive parts from it, and there’s plenty of things that we can certainly improve upon as well.
“But it’s definitely given us a good idea of what guys will be like in certain pressure situations, which is good.”
Few teams can afford the luxury of making so many changes for what was a testing occasion in front of a sold-out Thomond Park. The experience should stand to some of those younger Leinster players further down the line.
“Munster threw everything at us at different stages. You see what it meant, the occasion, the crowd, it’s a big game. And I’m pleased for a lot of our young guys who have come through that game well. Hopefully some of those guys can kick on from here as well because it’s a proper cauldron atmosphere out there as well, and I thought guys were relatively composed.
“Sometimes you can lose your head because it is quite chaotic, the crowd are in to you, you miss out on a couple of decisions and then you’re under pressure, but I thought the guys, and some of the young guys in particular, cope with that pressure well. So it’s a good learning experience for guys.”
Leinster will now head into 2023 top of the URC table with 10 wins from their first 10 league outings. Next up, it’s Connacht at the RDS on New Year’s Day, a game which could see Ireland captain Sexton return as Cullen looks to manage his resources.
“We will have a slightly different group that will come now next week,” Cullen added.
“Everyone has obviously done something slightly different over the last while.
“If you think there were those nine-games, a lot of games had a break week straight away post-November, so that was obviously one of the weeks off. So, again a lot of guys will be out this week, other guys will be out next week, just trying to manage the group well, so they are all fresh and raring to go when Europe comes around.”
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