IT IS AN area of their game that has come under scrutiny in recent weeks and assistant coach Robin McBryde is looking for consistency from the Leinster lineout moving into the second half of the season.
They ultimately emerged from the game with a 15-7 victory, yet Leinster won just nine of their 16 lineouts in a European Champions Cup Pool 2 clash against Clermont at the Aviva Stadium on 14 December. Connacht also caused problems for the eastern province in this department during their URC encounter in the same venue last Saturday.
It is expected their pack will continue to be challenged heading into 2025 with a new law that comes into effect from 1 January determining that lineouts must be formed within 30 seconds of a mark being made.
The province’s senior coach Jacques Nienaber suggested last week that an attempt to prepare themselves for this law change may have contributed to the issues they experienced in the Clermont game and McBryde – who oversees the Leinster lineout – acknowledged he has possibly been trying to force things during recent games.
“For me personally, obviously we’ve had a couple of poor lineout performances recently. That’s down to the opposition, with what they’ve done. I thought Josh Murphy did well for Connacht at the weekend. When he was here, I enjoyed working with Josh. He’s a great lad,” McBryde said at a Leinster media briefing earlier this week.
“Consistency would be the one thing I am looking for. Maybe I am trying to stretch the boys a bit too far, but the boys are great to work with. They need to be stretched, we need to make a few subtle changes here and there. Whether this is the right time to do it, I don’t know. That’s on me.
“I thought Clermont arrived with a good plan. The important thing is when you make a mistake or lose a lineout, you learn from it quickly and we didn’t do that against Clermont. We kept going to the same area. It was a positive against Connacht because we didn’t lose a lineout in the second half. Are we trying to force it a little bit? There are a lot of things in there.”
Yet despite having this scope for improvement in a major facet of the game, Leinster currently hold a six-point lead over defending champions Glasgow Warriors at the summit of the United Rugby Championship table and are marginally behind Ronan O’Gara’s La Rochelle on score difference in the Champions Cup Pool 2 standings.
The Connacht game represented their 10th win from as many fixtures in the current season and it was achieved without a whole host of big-name players who will feature against arch rivals Munster in their latest interprovincial URC bout at Thomond Park this evening. Their resources were also stretched over the course of last Saturday’s contest on Lansdowne Road and McBryde was encouraged by how Leinster managed to overcome these issues – and eventually come on the right side of the result.
“You look at the bump in the road we had against Connacht. We lost Jack Conan pretty early, Max Deegan [Conan’s replacement] went off early. All of a sudden you have Alex Soroka playing his first game since I don’t know when and he’s got to scrummage at 8. Then we’ve got somebody [Lee Barron] in the bin and you’ve got Scott Penny throwing in the lineout.
“You’ve got all those things and you come out the other side and you think ‘we must be doing something right’. That cohesion, even with the chopping and the changing that’s been going on in the festive period, we still came through it. That, to me, speaks volumes.”
Whereas Leinster held off a second half surge from Connacht to earn a 20-12 win in the Aviva last Saturday, Munster moved into the URC play-off spots by defeating Ulster in Ravenhill on the previous night.
The hosts had looked set to triumph in the latter game despite losing Ireland international Tom O’Toole to a red card in the opening period, but Tom Farrell had other ideas as he completed his hat-trick of tries in the dying moments to earn Munster a 22-19 victory.
Even though it was a game that struggled to catch fire for large spells, McBryde’s past experiences in both Ireland and his native Wales tells him that this is quite often the case for derby encounters. It would come as little surprise if tonight’s showdown in Limerick also turned into an arm wrestle and McBryde certainly isn’t expecting anything easy in a packed out Thomond Park.
“Local derbies, in my experience anyway, not a lot of rugby does get played because there’s a little bit more blood and guts about a local derby. The physical nature of it and the will and the want to get one over your closest rival. Sometimes that can cloud your mind a little bit, but it was good. There will be 27,000 there on Friday, so that will be a great atmosphere to go into,” McBryde added.
The level of insight that this website provides (on the sport of rugby – I don’t read anything else) is remarkable and pretty much unparalleled. So I write the following as a huge fan of the writers of the 42: it’s pretty disappointing the way they pretty much refuse to criticise aspects of the game that clearly are open to criticism.
I’m a Munster and Ireland fan, but the PoC piece is typical of this. There’s very obvious issues with the lineout for some time now, but god forbid anyone writes a negative word about Paulie. He’s ‘a legend of the game’ as the 42 -and many other- writers unceasingly remind us.
Agreed. He is. So that means he’s above criticism? Our lineout is a joke at this point, and it’s his responsibility, is it not? In any other industry he’d be fired at this point, or at the very least subject to a serious performance review. But what do we get on the 42 and on every other Irish rugby podcast: well, you can’t blame Paulie. His expertise is unparalleled. It’s not his fault we don’t have the players to compete with Fiji.
FFS.
@Liam Murray: bit like Andy Farrell aswell.
@Niall English: Yeah, the Irish team has been dreadful since Farrell was made Head Coach
@Liam Murray: the problem with the Irish lineout is all PO’C’s fault argument is it fell apart when Leinster’s lineout suffered an even worse collapse. It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to point out that we need to look at the common pieces of both line outs to understand where the problem is.
@Michael Corkery: POC is still responsible for Ireland’s lineout which has been a disaster for 18 months.
Regardless of what happens at the provinces he is still responsible.
@Kevin Ryan: achieved no better than any Irish coach before him and with a better squad than any coach before him and against far weaker opposition in 6 nations
@Niall English: Since you are such an expert and we clearly know nothing. Can you list all the previous coaches, who won a series in New Zealand? My memory must be foggy.
@Niall English: Weren’t you the same nitwit who insisted that the same Farrell had a ‘huge falling out’ with Mack Hansen and that Hansen wouldn’t be selected for the AIs? You claimed you were in the know. Quite wide of the mark with that one, as you are with this comment, and Porter’s scrum tech…and most things rugby!
@Liam Murray: it’s a very small industry for these lads , if you upset one player / coach you might find your access cut to others etc I think they have to strike a fine line when reporting
It’s not just a Leinster issue. It seems there’s nobody in the 4 provinces able to hit their man at a line-out at any sort of regularity.
@Ray Ridge: Bar the boys from the west they are the best in ireland
@Ray Ridge: the Munster lineout has improved massively since Codling went in as a consultant. The IRFU would never move him from the Women’s team to a province or men’s team in a Women’s RWC year, the PR backlash wouldn’t be worth it
@Ray Ridge: Connachts line out has probably been the best of them
@Shanie: D Murray may find himself in the next Irish squad – best line out caller on the island
Should be a great game munster will allways have a chance its munster sure and leinster such an amazing team when firing hope for a cracker dont really care who wins
@Shanie: As long as it’s not like last year
@Thesaltyurchin: cant even remember what happend yesterday lol
Are we over thinking it?? Seems mad obvious, they all do a hakka now before they even call it, throw it in ffs. After 100 years of rugby are there are still new ‘modern ways’ to strategies the throwing and catching of a line out? No there isn’t… of course there are multiple impacts when the player hits the ground and how the play follows but the precursor is basic.
To be fair, they have been pretty consistent in the second half of the last 3 seasons
Absolutely nothing wrong with the Ulster lineout and I’ve never noticed a problem with Connachts so it must be a Leinster and Munster problem