LIFE IS GOOD for Ross Byrne at the moment. After a frustrating time out of action with an arm injury – missing the entirety of Ireland’s Six Nations campaign – the out-half has returned to club duty with a bang, starring for Leinster in their Champions Cup quarter-final defeat of La Rochelle.
He’s since had two weeks off to sharpen up for this weekend, where he’s primed to play a central role as Leinster welcome Northampton Saints to Croke Park in the semi-final.
“It’s probably been a little bit unusual, playing as little as I have this season,” Byrne says.
“I feel great physically which is probably a little bit unusual at this time of year. Sometimes it’s a little bit the opposite so from that perspective it’s great. To have a challenge ahead like this is brilliant.”
With La Rochelle now out of their way Leinster must feel they have a golden opportunity to conquer Europe again for the first time since 2018.
Byrne has been there for every setback since – the defeats to Saracens in 2019 and 2020, along with the trio of losses to La Rochelle across 2021 to 2023. Last year was a particularly sore one – Byrne playing the full 80 minutes as Leinster surrendered a 17-point lead to Ronan O’Gara’s men at Aviva Stadium.
Their highly impressive dismissal of the French side in last month’s quarter-final eased some of those wounds, but Leinster’s appetite won’t be fully sated until they have a trophy in their hands again.
“I don’t think you can erase stuff like that from your mind, and how painful it was, but I think for us it’s just trying to fulfil our potential and perform to the levels that we know we’re capable of.
“I think that’s really what we’re going after.”
The 29-year-old is now more important to Leinster’s cause than ever, with Johnny Sexton’s retirement leaving him as the senior out-half in Leo Cullen’s squad.
Thankfully for the province, he’s returned from the arm injury which kept him sidelined for almost three months with some of the best rugby of his career.
When Leinster needed him to step up, Byrne looked every bit the big game player against La Rochelle, delivering arguably his best outing for the province. Writing in his Irish Examiner column, O’Gara revealed how he’d send La Rochelle out to “derail” Byrne only to discover “he is much better with the ball than I gave him credit for.”
Byrne isn’t interested in offering his own thoughts on O’Gara’s words but feels the various experiences and setbacks he’s experienced over the years are standing to him now.
“I think the experience is the big thing in terms of the occasions and being able to… I think sometimes these games are slightly different, the occasion, how close they can be and how much they can hinge on big moments and just probably being able to lean on the experiences of the past, the whole team.
“That’s probably a big benefit that we have as a squad, we have so much experienced at club level as well as international level. It’s just being able to tap into all of that.”
Revenge was the motivation for La Rochelle, but the group will have no shortage of emotional energy to tap into again this week. The opportunity to line out in front of over 80,000 fans at the home of the GAA is one to savour.
Byrne has some GAA in his own story, having played a couple of years underage with Kilmacud Crokes.
“It was always very much secondary [to rugby], I kind of got dragged into it by accident to be honest.
They were down numbers one day so I went up for a game and enjoyed it so I kept playing for a few years. I probably stopped about 14.
“I never got to play at Croke Park unfortunately but I’ve been there a fair few times.
“It’s some stadium, obviously it’s such an iconic stadium in this country. With it selling out so fast as well, hopefully it’s a very special day.”
Northampton have an highly effective attacking game but Leinster’s defence is looking increasingly mean as Jacques Nienaber’s system continues to bed in. No team conceded less tries than Leinster in the pool stages (5) and La Rochelle only managed to cross once at the Aviva last time out.
“Obviously with the new system, we’re still kind of growing it each week to be honest, we’re far from perfecting it and each team we play is probably a slightly different challenge, in how they challenge our system so this week will probably be a slightly different challenge to the one we faced in the last couple of weeks, in terms of how they might go after us.
“I think everyone sees how good they are when they get on the front foot. And even at the weekend [v Harlequins] they scored tries pretty comfortably. But I think obviously stopping them in the first couple of phases is a big thing because if they do get moving they’re a very hard team to stop.”
