RUGBY HEINEKEN CUP NEWS: Gerry Thornleyon the dilemmas facing coach Michael Cheika as he marshals his resources ahead of Sunday's showdown with Edinburgh
TO SAY Leinster’s tight-five options are looking a little skeletal would hardly be accurate, not with Ollie Le Roux among them. But suddenly Michael Cheika doesn’t have too many options at his disposal. As feared, Leinster’s Springbok prop CJ van der Linde (damaged foot) and captain Leo Cullen (shoulder) have been ruled out of Sunday’s make-or-break Heineken Cup pool finale against Edinburgh at the RDS.
The only props named in the 26-man squad announced yesterday were Stanley Wright, whose neck/back problem has prevented him from training this week, Cian Healy and Le Roux. While van der Linde’s dislocated toe may since have suffered some ligament damage – his foot is in a boot to reduce the swelling pending further tests in 10-14 days – Ronnie McCormack is “in a bit of a fitness battle himself”, according to the Leinster coach.
“Losing two of your starting tight five is not ideal but, in saying that, a player like Devin Toner was excluded from the squad last week and was quite unlucky to lose out so he gets an opportunity to come back in,” said Cheika, which is fair enough, but a cloud hovers over Malcolm O’Kelly’s participation pending his disciplinary hearing tomorrow night for stamping on Phil Vickery in the loss to Wasps last Saturday.
Cheika said he remains “very hopeful about Malcolm’s situation” on the premise he was yellow-carded for his sin and, awful though it looked, one can scarcely recall Ireland’s most capped player ever raising a hand in anger, never mind a foot, in around 300 first-class matches.
“Looking at it in detail and also looking at the reports from referees, we obviously can’t say much, but Mal has an impeccable record as well,” said Cheika.
Be that as it may, the odds are Leinster will be obliged to start Trevor Hogan alongside Toner, with one of their backrowers covering the second row, most probably Cameron Jowitt.
Furthermore, for all his many under-age achievements, making only his ninth start for Leinster and second in the Heineken Cup would also be a big ask of the 21-year-old Healy against the much improved Edinburgh scrum.
“They are always a competitive team,” admitted Cheika, citing Edinburgh’s double over Castres and their two close games with Wasps, as well as “a few lucky breaks” in Leinster’s opening win in Murrayfield.
“And because we know them so well from our encounters against them in the Magners League and Heineken Cup we will be very wary of our opponents.”
As Shane Jennings remarked, “they’d love to blow on our candle”, although as Cheika also stressed, Leinster will have the benefit of knowing the outcomes in all but one of the other pools come Sunday’s 1pm kick-off and will have a much clearer idea as to how necessary a bonus point might be to ensure a place in the quarter-finals, or whether a win, and 20 points, would be sufficient even if Wasps topped the pool with a bonus point win in Castres.
Nor does Cheika want his players unnecessarily distracted. “We’ve discussed it already, because if there’s one thing that’s very important it’s that the whole team is going in the same direction. The first thing we did was have a discussion about it at the start of the week.”
“We know exactly what we have to do: we need to win the game, pure and simple. It’s the maximum disrespect for your opposition if you even think about getting to that objective (four tries). There are still plenty of games to go before we kick-off, so we’re going to know our exact position before kick-off, and we can manage the game, in game, if we need to.”
“It may not even be a necessity come kick-off time, and that’s a real possibility. There’s no point in thinking about something that may not even be happening. The first thing we need to do is go out there and play really well, make it a horrible day for them as well.”
Try-less in their last two outings when reliant on Felipe Contepomi kicking 11 of 12 penalties, Leinster wouldn’t be too strongly fancied to procure another bonus point win over Edinburgh, although interestingly, Cheika hinted strongly that Isa Nacewa and Contepomi would continue at 10 and 12 in an unchanged backline when asked whether last weekend’s performance had muddied the backline selection at all.
“I don’t think it’s muddied it. I don’t think we have much doubt, to be honest. We know that we need to have a bit more flow in our game, but we’re also very aware that this can come and go with all teams. In October we were scoring as freely as they came, and since the middle of December tries haven’t come as easy.”
LEINSTER(v Edinburgh) Forwards(14): Cian Healy, Ollie le Roux, John Fogarty, Bernard Jackman, Stan Wright, Trevor Hogan, Devin Toner, Cameron Jowitt, Malcolm O'Kelly, Rocky Elsom, Stephen Keogh, Shane Jennings, Seán O'Brien, Jamie Heaslip. Backs(12): Chris Keane, Chris Whitaker, Isa Nacewa, Jonathan Sexton, Luke Fitzgerald, Simon Keogh, Felipe Contepomi, Gordon D'Arcy, Brian O'Driscoll, Shane Horgan, Girvan Dempsey, Rob Kearney.
Referee: Chris White (RFU).
