Josh van der Flier and Leinster have been enduring an anxious wait for the results of a scan on the hamstring injury which forced him off in the first half of his side’s BKT URC quarter-final win over the Scarlets last Saturday.
But the province remain reasonably hopeful that van der Flier might yet be fit for next Saturday’s semi-final against Glasgow Warriors at the Aviva Stadium (kick-off 2.45pm) and that the injury will not jeopardise his fitness for the forthcoming British & Irish Lions tour to Australia.
“We hope for clearance,” said senior coach Jacques Nienaber at the squad’s HPC on Monday which, being a bank holiday, may have contributed to the delay in obtaining results. “We sent him for a scan yesterday but I don’t think it has come back yet. That’s quite weird, for a first-world country, so we are still waiting.”
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In the intervening void, Nienaber was not inclined to speculate.
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“Obviously, I am fingers crossed, toes crossed, that he can make the semi-final. It would be nice.”
Garry Ringrose will also be monitored before a decision is made on his fitness after missing last week’s quarter-final with a calf injury.
“He did some running last week so his race against time is going through the return-to-play protocols so running, change direction, acceleration, deceleration,” said Nienaber.
“If he can tick all the boxes and doesn’t have symptoms after being loaded, then he is available for selection.”
Similarly, Tommy O’Brien will be further assessed for a foot injury, while Jordan Larmour has returned to full training. However, Tadhg Furlong has been ruled out and is unlikely to add to his injury curtailed haul of seven games for Leinster and three for Ireland this season due to his recurring calf issues.
“I can’t talk for him,” said Nienaber, “but he hasn’t played a lot, didn’t play in the Six Nations, then comes back for two or three games and then he gets a setback again. It’s tough for a player to get a rhythm. You like to get a string of games and build on your confidence and get the team to get confidence in you, so I think it is frustrating.”
Although Leinster lacked precision in their handling and were at times impatient against the Scarlets, the two-time World Cup-winning coach reasoned that “knockouts are a little bit different. It’s a different competition and something that in international level one doesn’t get exposed to except in World Cups.
“But if you look at Glasgow they’ve been quite successful, Munster have been quite successful, we haven’t been successful with it yet. Hopefully we took lessons out of the previous games we played in knockouts and we can apply ourselves a little bit better.”
Speaking of lost knockout ties, the Champions Cup semi-final defeat to Northampton appears to be lingering but Nienaber maintained this wasn’t the case for him.
“No, it’s gone. The competition is gone. Next year. Like, is there a anything we can about it?”
Informed that Leo Cullen had, unprompted, referenced the Northampton game four times in his post-match last Saturday, Nienaber said: “Maybe with Leo, but not for me. For me it’s water under the bridge. Not one ounce of energy from me personally put into, thinking about the Champions Cup semi-final is going to change anything, except the lessons you learn. So maybe he referenced that.
“There’s definitely stuff that we could have learned and that being the last knockout game that we played that’s definitely something we can bring into that.
“So, maybe his angle was more that; there’s lessons from our last knock-out game that we played was Europe and now we have a URC one.”
That 52-0 Champions Cup quarter-final win in the Aviva over Glasgow seems much more than eight weeks ago now. It was put in perspective five weeks’ later by Leinster’s hard-earned 13-5 over the same opponents in the same stadium and with Sione Tuipulotu, Kyle Steyn, Max Williamson and Scott Cummings having all returned from injury in recent weeks the reigning champions were full value for their 36-18 quarter-final win at home to the Stormers last Friday.
This was a repeat of last season’s quarter-final victory, after which Glasgow won away to Munster and the Bulls to lift the trophy, so heightening the threat they pose next Saturday.
“Yeah, because they love it,” said Nienaber. “If you think back to last year they went to Munster in Thomond Park. It’s a tall order to win in Thomond Park and they did that. Then it’s an even taller order to fly over, go to altitude, play the Bulls – which we struggled with. We got knocked out the week before by the Bulls. They went over there and got a result there.”
