LAST UPDATE | 15 Dec 2021
LEINSTER HAVE 67 players registered to their European squad so, much like Munster last weekend, even if they were forced down to the bare bones, they would still have a decent chance of being able to field a team.
Montpellier have 69 players registered, including teenager Karl Martin, a former Leinster and Ireland U18 centre who joined the French club’s academy last summer.
The point here is that both clubs have huge European squads so even with Covid-19 outbreaks in both camps, they and tournament organisers EPCR are still very hopeful that Friday’s game in Montpellier will go ahead.
Leinster confirmed last Friday that three of their senior players had tested positive, with another unconfirmed number of new cases announced yesterday. Happily, Leo Cullen and the rest of his squad were able to resume training yesterday after it had been suspended on Monday.
Meanwhile, Montpellier confirmed a fifth positive case in their camp yesterday morning.
Of course, there is more testing ahead and we can never be certain of anything in this Covid environment, but Leinster have been proceeding with the firm intention of being ready for Friday night.
“We’re due to travel on Thursday and at the moment we’ve got clearance to travel, so that’s the plan at the minute,” said Leinster head Leo Cullen yesterday.
Even if more of his senior squad are ruled out, Cullen has confidence in Leinster being able to field a team for this game.
If any club is unable to fulfill a fixture, the opposition are awarded a 28-0 bonus-point victory, as was the case last weekend when Scarlets were forced to hand Bristol a walkover.
It’s not a scenario Cullen can envisage for Leinster.
“For Europe, you were allowed to have a very extended squad, we have 60-odd players or whatever it is, so we’ve been lucky,” said Cullen.
“So many of our guys in that 60 are academy guys, it’s just always forward planning really. We’re lucky we have a good chunk of guys that have played in the senior team, even a lot of our academy guys, they’re generally they’re here with us.
“For this period we actually just decided to move a lot of those guys back down to Energia Park to train down there separately, to tighten up what we have here. So we’ve tried to take some of those precautions over the last couple of weeks just in terms of that forward planning piece.
“But yeah, we’d have a lot of confidence, similar to what Munster had. It was great to see some of those guys go so well, a lot of those guys we would have seen at underage level.”
Dealing with Covid in camp seems to be an ever-growing reality once again for professional sport, with lots of rugby teams recording cases in recent times and Premier League football clubs in England also being heavily affected.
Cullen said Leinster’s players will need to continue to do their best to mitigate against the risk of catching the virus.
“There is a huge responsibility, there always has been, on players to do the right thing,” said Cullen.
“But as you are well aware, there was a looseness, I guess, in the build-up to Christmas in society which created lots of cases post-Christmas and then things get locked down and tightened up.
“For us, that’s easier because there’s less distraction to get sucked into because things are locked down anyway.
“So, for us, it’s easier to do the right thing because the streets are quieter, so to speak. But then society reopened after the vaccine and all the rest. We are in this sort of cycle and then there are more and more cases and everyone is talking about variants… again, I’m not a medical expert. The bit that you’re seeing is there’s a greater openness I guess.
“There’s even more challenges for our guys… in the building, you have academy players, young players, they’re mixing in with some guys living at home with their sibling and all the rest and you’re asking all of those people to try do to the right thing to do as well.
“We talked last week about my own personal scenario with young kids. You’re in schools and all the rest. It’s a minefield when you go through it, but you can only do what you can. Control what you can.
“That’s been the key message from us: just control the controllables. Try and put yourself in a situation where you’re not going to get compromised. That’s what we’ve tried to push as best we can.”
