GERRY THORNLEYgets the thoughts of Leinster coach Joe Schmidt on the injury count after last night's game
JAMIE HEASLIP emerged as Leinster’s only injury scare following last night’s win with regard to next Saturday’s penultimate Heineken Cup pool game against Saracens at the RDS.
Heaslip aggravated the left ankle injury which he initially sustained in the away leg of the Clermont matches, making a remarkable to recovery to play in the second before missing both of Leinster’s festive wins, and departed in the 63rd minute.
“We’re probably just going to have to wait on Jamie,” admitted a slightly concerned Joe Schmidt. “I’m hesitant to say too much about that one. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see over the next 48 hours. At least we’ve got Saturday/Sunday off and he’s a guy that does recover quickly and see how he’s progressing.”
Schmidt revealed that Leinster had a couple of injury concerns during the week in the form of Cian Healy’s strained hamstring, “and so he was restricted to 40 minutes, with fatigue we could have put him at risk otherwise”, and Jonathan Sexton didn’t train on Wednesday due to a calf strain. “That’s why he came off in the end really, the calf was starting to tighten up and it’s a case of just managing the risk.”
Sean O’Brien could have played last night but was merely rested, while Heaslip remains the biggest concern. “If there was a doubt it would probably be Jamie but I would be reasonably confident about everybody else.
As for the performance, Schmidt said: “I do think we lacked that edge that we’ve had in our recent matches. I think the fact that we’ve had a couple of tight turnarounds and we’ve had a number of guys who hadn’t played for a couple of weeks, they were maybe just a little bit flat and maybe needed to find their feet again.
“And hopefully that outing will have fine-tuned them a little bit and they’ll come out and will demonstrate a bit more enthusiasm next week.”
Schmidt was also palpably frustrated, even more so than the crowd, at the manner in which Ospreys’ players flew into the breakdown from all angles. “It’s not ideal leading in to a massive game to just get 40 or 60 minutes, or even 80 minutes under your belt, so am I confident? I know this group reasonably well now and I’m confident that at home, at the RDS, a Heineken Cup game, I’m pretty confident that they’ll find the edge.”
“I’ve never let the scoreboard dictate my life,” said Ospreys’ coach Scott Johnson. “I was really happy with the intent and the endeavour, because we put this team together at the last minute and I think they showed great resolve and took a quality team to the wire. I thought they should have got a bit more out of that game than the scoreboard suggests.”
As for Dan Biggar’s return of two from seven, Johnson said: “If you take the burden of the kick everyone looks at you but I thought his general play was superb and he’s won us games, and he was very, very unfortunate. The ball fell off the tee when he was coming to kick it, and I feel for the kid, but such a young man, to carry around some senior players as he does, he won’t have any complaints from me regarding Dan Biggar. It was just one of those nights and the other boy (Sexton) kicked really well, so you just gotta except your punishment when it goes against you.”
