LEINSTER’S RECORD-BREAKING WIN against Montpellier at the RDS could come at a cost as the province await updates on the fitness of some senior figures.
The hosts, who hammered Montpellier by 82 points in their round three Champions Cup clash, lost tighthead Tadhg Furlong to a calf injury in the opening minutes.
Leinster are hopeful the issue isn’t too serious ahead of next weekend’s trip to pay Bath, and Andy Farrell will be anxiously awaiting an update just three weeks out from the start of Ireland’s Six Nations campaign, particularly given Furlong’s recent history with calf injuries.
The Ireland prop missed the first half of last season after injuring his calf while recovering from a long-term back problem.
Jordan Larmour was also removed at half time against Montpellier after shipping a heavy blow during an encouraging first half display, while James Ryan was pulled from the matchday squad due to what Leinster describe as “a minor hamstring injury”.
“Jordan is a dead leg, probably 25 or 30 minutes into the game,” Cullen explained.
Tadhg, his calf, we’re hoping it’s not too bad. James is a hamstring on Friday. We just sort of managed him yesterday. Again, hopefully it’s not too bad. It doesn’t seem too bad but it’s a short turnaround and we’ll assess him a bit more early in the week.”
The Leinster boss also admitted that he won’t be reading too much into his side’s performance given how poor Montpellier were, the French side handing out a number of debuts on the back of a difficult period which saw the club recorded a high number of Covid cases in recent weeks.
“Not a huge amount, is the honest answer. We just have to park that game and move on and focus on the next challenge.
“We played Bath in our previous game so they are an opposition that is reasonably fresh in our memories. It’s a different challenge playing them at The Rec so we will see what the conditions are like. It can be quite tricky, that pitch, at this time of year so we’ll see.
“We’ll assess, recover, it’s a short turnaround so a couple of training days and make sure we’re aware of the threats coming our way. It’s very much onto the next one because you can only spend so long analysing that one there.”
Cullen was also reluctant to criticise Montpellier for sending such a heavily depleted side to Dublin.
“Ideally you’d like every team to go full-out for every game, but I don’t know the situation in Montpellier, so it’s unfair for me to comment,” Cullen added.
“For the game (against Montpellier) in round two, we had a decent group of players we thought, but obviously circumstances and all the rest, so it’s hard to keep talking about the same thing over and over.
“I don’t know what their situation is. For us, we just need to focus on ourselves really. That’s all we can do now, and as I said it hasn’t been an easy time for sport in general.”
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