Big games demand bold moves. Leinster upped the sticks yesterday and the caravan moved on to Johnstown House in Co Meath for a sleepover. In the language of Semaphore, coach Joe Schmidt has made a declaration. Against the Scarlets this weekend in the Heineken Cup he needs everyone with him, the extra heave, the extra one per cent.

That Brian O’Driscoll, Rob Kearney and Luke Fitzgerald emerged injury free from last Saturday’s outing and Isa Nacewa, Dave Kearney, Richardt Strauss and Eoin O’Malley have been confirmed as back training, Schmidt’s plan to better focus minds is also an acknowledgement that a fractured season thus far could do with some cohesion.

Summit meeting

The retreat in Enfield where Declan Kidney and Ireland held a summit meeting several years ago seems an appropriate venue for a group think-in on how to engineer a bonus-point win over Llanelli.

In the Ireland squad’s no-holds barred meeting, they confronted team issues like provincial parochialism and fidelity to the jersey. By the following spring of 2009, the squad won Ireland’s first Grand Slam in 61 years.

This week’s challenge is a curious one for Leinster, who normally speak of process and performance: build the performance and the tries will come. And they usually do. But this week the stakes are high even by their standards .

It’s about numbers, four tries at least, ironically, the kind of end-line thinking in which they don’t ever engage. The players also know poorly-judged comments about running in scores would be perceived as the conceit of champions and end up pinned on the Llanelli dressingroom door. On the back of a 47-15 thrashing by Ulster last Friday the Welsh side will grasp at straws.

“Occasionally we just head out there for a change of scenery. It is a massive couple of weekends for us but if we don’t get things right this weekend then the second week counts for nothing,” says Leinster manager Guy Easterby.

“So it will just be about focusing the mind and a change of environment and having some time together as a group.”

That’s not it fully. Schmidt has seen how the team are coalescing again, having shed some of the aristocratic sparkle that comes with being European champions, understandable with the volume and range of talent filtering back from sick bay. Squad wellbeing may also be measured by a patchy 31-16 win away to Edinburgh. Still, the shift to Meath, surely, is a bold statement of intent.

“Possibly, and maybe that’s how the perception (will be) and that’s not a bad thing either,” adds Easterby. “It’s not that we need to focus any more but it is always good to go down there and have the game plans reiterated to you and to understand the magnitude of the game on the weekend. We have got to get a win. It’s as simple as that. If it is a one per cent help then it is a worthwhile trip.”

Available

“We have had a lot of time where there were a lot of players not available whether that be a young player or a senior player, we have had players out. This is the first time the majority of the group has been available so we can go down there and train hard and also we are together as a group.”

Schmidt will look to Kearney, O’Driscoll and Fitzgerald for big performances but there is a danger too in asking for what may not yet be available. Fitzgerald, who signed a one- year deal with the province in the summer, and O’Driscoll have been injured spectators for months, while Kearney played just 31 minutes prior to last weekend.

“Brian is the only guy who got 80 minutes (last weekend), so Luke has played 62 minutes since this season, Rob has played 90 minutes, so these guys aren’t at the top of their games, they are not six, seven games into the season and feeling 100 per cent,” the Leinster manager explains.

“You can’t expect miracles from those guys. Brian was the only one who played 80 minutes, so it is not a matter, I guess, of those turning up and playing at the top of their game because we all know it isn’t that easy but it is great to have them in the mix for selection.

Knackered

“I know they were all knackered at the end, I know they were out a long time and rusty could be a word that you would use.

“There were inaccuracies in our game and I would not try and hide from that – not from just those three. We still showed enough to come away with a four-try win.”

On Saturday morning Easterby spoke to his younger brother Simon, the Llanelli coach. “He was pissed off,” he says, adding that the former Ireland flanker and Llanelli have pride, that the team are hurting. Schmidt will see danger and opportunity. A little team bonding may just be inspired.

O'Shea faces disrepute charge

Harlequins director of rugby, Conor O’Shea, a former employee of the Rugby Football Union, faces a disrepute charge after criticising the performance of the referee Llyr Apgeraint-Roberts during his side’s victory at London Welsh on Sunday and saying that he had no confidence in the feedback process between the Premiership clubs and Twickenham.

Ed Morrison, the RFU’s head of elite referees development, spoke after the match to O’Shea, who was the union’s director of regional academies for three years from 2005.

The decision on whether O’Shea should face a disciplinary panel lies with the RFU’s head of discipline, Gerard McEvilly.