LEINSTER WILL AWAIT updates on Ryan Baird and James Lowe after the pair were both forced off in Friday’s 55-24 Champions Cup quarter-final defeat of Leicester Tigers.
Baird left the action with just 24 minutes played with a suspected dislocated shoulder while Lowe limped off in the second half with a calf issue. Robbie Henshaw also appeared to suffer an injury but head coach Leo Cullen said the centre’s issue shouldn’t be cause for concern.
“(Baird went off) with his shoulder, I’m not sure exactly, but we’ll see, hopefully he’s not too bad. But we’ll see how that settles down,” Cullen said.
“James Lowe went off with his calf as well, so we will see how he is. That’s the challenge isn’t it? Physical games. You have to be able to deal with that. It’s a 23-man game and I thought our guys, the bench all added in their different ways, which was good.
“Overall we are pleased to be through to the next round.
“Robbie was okay. He was just feeling a bit of tightness at half-time, so he was okay in terms of making the change.”
Leinster are likely to rest most of their frontline players for the upcoming back-to-back URC games in South Africa, with the Champions Cup semi-finals set to be played on the weekend of April 28/29/30.
Injuries aside, it was a night where Leinster had little to worry about as they put a frustrating first-half behind them to dismiss the English champions in impressive fashion and book their place in the last four, where they will play the winners of today’s meeting between Toulouse and the Sharks.
With Leinster leading 17-10 at half-time in Dublin, the turning point came early in the second half when the home side, reduced to 14 men following a yellow card for Caelan Doris, kicked on to outscore their visitors 10-0.
“If you wind the clock a bit further back, we were 17-3 up (in the first half), Leicester get a penalty and kick into the corner, and off the back of it they end up scoring in the corner, suddenly at half time it’s 17-10,” Cullen said.
Definitely it made us quite quiet, and we have a good look at ourselves at half time, and then Caelan gets binned, and we were down to 14 men. But the response was really positive.
“We definitely focused the minds, we dealt with the maul off the initial lineout when they moved the ball wide, and we were able to counter-ruck. We get a penalty, kick down that end of the field. I wasn’t sure how that maul gets collapsed, but they get the scrum, and our seven-man scrum ends up driving them off their own ball. That was a huge moment, and Ross kicks the penalty and we managed the period really well.
“That 10-minute period of Caelan’s bin, and the 10-15 minute period after that was where the game went away from Leicester, I guess. Lots of pleasing things in the game, definitely things we can get better at, but we’re delighted to get through to the next round.
“The players should have a lot of confidence off the experiences they’ve built in the last few seasons. Just to be able to deal with whatever takes place in the game. We try to plan for lots of these scenarios, we dealt with that scenario well, which was good. Everyone is clear in terms of what we go to. Credit to the players, I thought they were excellent.
“It’s great, for the guys it’s a real privilege for us to be here. The beauty of playing on Friday is we get to watch the other three games now without the stress of having our game.”
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