Champions Cup: Leinster v Gloucester, RDS, Friday, 8.0 – Live on RTÉ 2 and BT Sport
At face value, and certainly with a team not professional in its attitude, this could be something of a booby trap. The possibility of complacency arising from last week’s statement win away to Racing is compounded by Gloucester seemingly selecting a weakened team.
Supposedly understrength sides in the Heineken Champions Cup have confounded expectations before. When little Montauban made their tournament debut in 2008 against a vintage Munster side who were reigning champions and had won the trophy twice in the previous three seasons, the French club sent over a second-string selection. Munster were ultimately indebted to a very late and questionable penalty by Ronan O’Gara for a 19-17 win.
As with Montauban and others, then, this Gloucester side can swing from the hip knowing they have nothing to lose.
Leinster themselves have not been immune in failing to back up a big performance a week later. After eviscerating Wasps by 52-3 with a nigh-on perfect round-one performance four seasons ago, they failed to scale anything like those heights just over a week later when losing to a Toulouse team coming out of a slump and whom they would thrash twice subsequently en route to the final. There was also Leinster’s 19-8 loss at home to Northampton a week after their crushing 40-7 win away to the Saints in the 2013-14 season.
But Leinster have generally proven themselves to be uber-focused in such scenarios, especially in this competition. One only has to recall their 89-7 win over an understrength Montpellier last January.
“You are tunnel-visioned because you’ve just got to control your own parts,” said Leo Cullen on foot of the two sides being announced yesterday. “We’ve seen it over the years. We’ll treat this team with full respect, focus on ourselves. We were going through the preparation this week and we were going through a fair array of players that may or may not play. The guys are very diligent in terms of doing their homework part on their opposition.
“Maybe we would have expected to see a few different faces there but we’ll just deal with what’s in front of us, and go out and try and get as much as we possibly can from the game. You saw that as an example when we played Montpellier last season. They turned up and were missing a few players. We just need to deliver a big performance and try and rack up as many points as we possibly can in the circumstances of the game. I don’t think it’s any different really.”
Cullen and Leinster will also be acutely aware that, as he put it: “The higher seeding you get, you get better benefits later on in the tournament.”
With that in mind, Gloucester are one of five other teams in Pool A who garnered five points on the opening weekend.
“It’s a real thing, and that’s the thing that’s so unusual about the bloody pool. Like, maybe Gloucester take the view that they got five points last week and it’s a free pass for them, or whatever their mindset is. I don’t know.
“But you have to treat everybody with respect, and we know a lot of the names here. There’s a lot of good players in that group anyway so we just need to focus on delivering a big performance ourselves.
“You look at our group and it’s like, ‘Okay, we have five points, what are all the other teams with five points?’ And for some of them it’s ‘what score will they rack up again?’ But we’ll just focus on us, can we get a bonus point win, can we keep adding points as we go along?
“So it’s just step by step by step, you can’t start by scoring four tries, you can only score your first one first and go from there.”
Cullen has perhaps also guarded against any hint of complacency and countered the six-day turnaround to some degree by “freshening” up his starting XV. Luke McGrath, Rónan Kelleher, Ross Molony and Jack Conan are all promoted from last week’s bench, with Jamison Gibson-Park and Dan Sheehan named among the replacements along with the returning Johnny Sexton, Jordan Larmour, Joe McCarthy and Max Deegan. Jason Jenkins was ruled out with a hamstring strain.
[ ‘You are pretty much playing Ireland’: Gloucester staring into Leinster challengeOpens in new window ]
George Skivington has made 13 changes from the Gloucester starting XV that recorded a 22-17 bonus-point win over Bordeaux/Bègles last week, with full-back Lloyd Evans and wing Alex Hearle the only remaining starters.
Four of the replacements who made such a big impact in turning last week’s game around with three tries in the final quarter, particularly the Fijian backrower Albert Tuisue, are promoted to the starting team, but Jonny May, Pumas’ outhalf Santiago Carrera and Italian scrum-halve Steve Varney are among those rested.
Leinster may be red-hot favourites (33 points according to Paddy Power) but while the forecast is not as bitterly cold, Ballsbridge is still likely to be Baltic.
“It could be worse, it could be lashing rain,” laughed Cullen heartily. “But that’s just the conditions of the game, isn’t it? Yeah, you’d probably take cold over wind and rain I think, but it’s northern hemisphere winter rugby, isn’t it?”
Leinster have been juggling their training sessions this week, with the RDS kept under cover yesterday,
“It’s not been a bad training week to be fair, all things considered. But yeah, just roll the sleeves up and get on with it. Winter rugby.”
Cullen’s refreshed selection should also assure some high-impact replacements will have been keeping their hands warm with a view to holding Leinster’s foot on the throttle until the end.
LEINSTER: Hugo Keenan; Jimmy O’Brien, Garry Ringrose (capt), Charlie Ngatai, James Lowe; Ross Byrne, Luke McGrath; Andrew Porter, Rónan Kelleher, Michael Ala’alatoa; Ross Molony, James Ryan; Caelan Doris, Josh van der Flier, Jack Conan.
Replacements: Dan Sheehan, Ed Byrne, Cian Healy, Joe McCarthy, Max Deegan, Jamison Gibson-Park, Johnny Sexton, Jordan Larmour.
GLOUCESTER: Lloyd Evans; Alex Hearle, Giorgi Kveseladze, Billy Twelvetrees, Jacob Morris; George Barton, Ben Meehan (capt); Harry Elrington, Henry Walker, Ciaran Knight; Freddie Thomas, Arthur Clark; Jake Polledri, Jack Clement, Albert Tuisue.
Replacements: Seb Blake, Alex Seville, Kirill Gotovtsev, Alex Craig, Harry Taylor, Charlie Chapman, Seb Atkinson, Kyle Moyle.
Referee: Luc Ramos (France)
Previous meetings – (2006-07): Leinster 37 Gloucester 20. Gloucester 19 Leinster 13.
Betting: 1-100 Leinster, 50-1 Draw, 50-1 Gloucester. Handicap odds (Gloucester +33pts) 4-5 Leinster, 18-1 Draw, 10-11 Gloucester.
Forecast: Leinster to win with a bonus point.
