Leinster are expected to restore some of their frontline Irish players who were used as replacements in the 52-0 quarter-final win over Glasgow, such as Dan Sheehan, Caelan Doris and Robbie Henshaw when the team for Saturday’s Champions Cup semi-final against Northampton at the Aviva Stadium (kick-off 5.30pm) is announced at lunchtime on Friday.
This means that despite his superb man of the match display in that quarter-final win, it seems likely that Jordie Barrett will revert to his role as an impact replacement along with Andrew Porter, with Leinster again apparently opting to start Cian Healy.
Max Deegan and Tommy O’Brien are again expected to be rewarded for their strong form of late by being retained at blindside flanker and rightwinger respectively, where they started against Glasgow. Ryan Baird, who was ruled out of the quarter-final but completed the full 80 minutes in the defeat by the Scarlets last week, and Jack Conan, who started the quarter-final only to be forced off in the 15th minute, are likely to be named on the bench, especially in the continuing absence of the injured James Ryan.
Leinster vs Northampton - the comeback final revisited
Add in Ronan Kelleher, Rabah Slimani, Luke McGrath and Ross Byrne, and Barrett would thus complete a very impactful bench. When playing the full 80 against Glasgow, Barrett had 15 carries, made 40 metres, had 17 passes, made four offloads, five kicks out of hand and was Leinster’s second highest tackler with 14, while he also won three turnovers.
The Counter Ruck: the rugby newsletter from The Irish Times
Leinster v Northampton: Mystery surrounds decision not to award late match-winning try
Leo Cullen believes he is man to lead Leinster forward despite loss to Northampton
Leinster’s Champions Cup quest flounders in face of Northampton’s attacking brilliance
Leinster arrive at this defining endgame to the season in reasonably good shape, and although most of Northampton’s leading frontliners such as Alex Mitchell have returned to fitness and form recently, their Director of Rugby Phil Dowson has confirmed that English fullback George Furbank will not be available this weekend.
Furbank suffered a broken arm in the eye-catching pool win away win against the Bulls in Loftus Versfeld in December and made his long-awaited return from the bench against Castres Olympique in the quarter-finals three weeks ago.
Furbank had to replace George Hendy, who suffered a shoulder injury, in the opening five minutes against Castres and scored one of the Saints’ seven tries. But Furbank’s arm has been in pain ever since and ahead of this weekend’s trip to Dublin, Dowson said: “George won’t play this weekend. He’s struggling to get over that arm break and into contact so he won’t be available this week.”
Furbank has missed Northampton’s ensuing Premiership wins away to Newcastle (35-34) and at home to Bristol (48-31) which has given them real momentum going into Saturday’s game, which is a repeat of the sides’ semi-final meeting last year when Leinster scraped through to a third successive final by 20-17.
However, whereas that game was an 82,300-capacity crowd at Croke Park, despite being at the Aviva Stadium this semi-final is not a sell-out, with ticket sales at the 40,000-mark.
The tournament organisers, EPCR, deny that they had more control over the pricing and distribution of this semi-final, having drawn criticism from Leinster for their overpricing of tickets three seasons ago when the semi-final against the mighty Toulouse, despite a three-week gap from the quarter-finals, drew an attendance of 42,076.
The EPCR say that they oversee all their semi-finals “in conjunction with stakeholders”, namely Leinster and the GAA last year, and Leinster and the IRFU this year. But for whatever reason, tickets were both overpriced and unbalanced by comparison this year. For example, within 12 minutes of tickets going on sale for this semi-final, all available children’s tickets (from €30 upwards as against €18 last year) had been bought.
With ticket sales barely above 30,000 at the start of the week, that mistakes have again been made was tacitly admitted by the EPCR when they released tickets with reduced prices this week, but the cheapest of those are still €42.
By comparison, Sunday’s semi-final in the Nouveau Stade de Bordeaux (also known as the Matmut Atlantique) between Bordeaux Bègles and Toulouse is a 42,000 sell-out. But the reigning, six-time champions have been dealt several more injury blows this week in addition to long-term casualty Antoine Dupont.
Scottish fullback Blair Kinghorn suffered a knee injury in Toulouse’s win over Castres last weekend which has sidelined him for an estimated three weeks and earlier this week, hooker Peato Mauvaka ruptured his ACL in training so ending his season and much of next season as well. Mauvaka has supplanted Julien Marchand as first-choice hooker for both Toulouse and France in the last two seasons.
Now, having suffered a calf injury earlier this week, goal-kicking fullback Thomas Ramos is considered highly doubtful for Sunday’s semi-final according to the Midi Olimpique website. A key figure in Toulouse winning four European and two French titles since 2019, Ramos would constitute another huge loss for the holders, be it his world-class goal-kicking, game-breaking abilities and leadership. The Argentinian Juan Cruz Mallia would likely start at fullback were Ramos ruled out.
