A debut for the Irish Under-20 and Leinster outhalf Sam Prendergast is the headline selection in the Leinster team sheet which Leo Cullen has unveiled for their penultimate URC regular season match against the Lions on Saturday (kick-off 4pm local time/3pm Irish, live on RTÉ 2 and Premier Sports 1).
With his tall, languid style and passing range, there is a hint of Stephen Larkham in the 20-year-old from Newbridge. Cullen’s selection of him is a clear statement of faith in Prendergast in the post-Johnny Sexton era.
Three other academy players start, with five more on the bench. It is an exciting selection, and there is also a welcome return for Tommy O’Brien, who makes his first appearance of the season after recovering from a knee injury. This time last year, O’Brien’s spiky performance against the Sharks in Leinster’s end-of-season mini tour to South Africa earned him a place on the bench in the quarter-final win away to Leicester.
Akin to that two-game safari, Leo Cullen is with the 30-man squad in South Africa while back at their UCD ranch, Stuart Lancaster is working with the “first” squad in readiness for their mouth-watering Champions Cup semi-final against Toulouse.
And one ventures that Cullen wouldn’t have it any other way.
Cullen becomes palpably excited in weeks like this, or for games in and around the November window and the Six Nations when Leinster are bulk suppliers to the Ireland team. He gets a buzz from academy stars such as Prendergast making their debuts.
Leinster have 46 fully contracted players in their senior squad as well as a further 19 players on their academy, with a further plethora of players coming through. They’re bursting at the seams and Cullen would regularly use 50-plus players in an average season.
Yet the restructuring of both the URC and Champions Cup stymies their ability to fully utilise their unrivalled squad depth. Until the last couple of seasons, Leinster would have been guaranteed 21 or 22 Pro14 games plus six in the pool stages of the Champions Cup. In seasons when they reached both finals, they played 32 or 33 games.
Now, like their counterparts, Leinster are only assured of 18 URC regular season games and four Champions Cup pool games. Tomorrow’s game is only their 23rd of a hitherto unbeaten season, and even if they reach both finals that figure will rise to maximum of 29.
This makes keeping such a large squad happy even more of a juggling act. Yet the separation of the Leinster squad into two for this fortnight does not remotely represent a split in the camp. Okay, rugby is not football, but keeping 46-plus players happy over the course of a 22 to 29-game season is quite a juggling act.
As important for this mini tour is the sprinkling of experienced players such as Rhys Ruddock, Max Deegan, Ed Byrne and Dave Kearney.
As is usually the case when the frontliners are otherwise engaged, Ruddock is the go-to captain. Although still only 32, this is his 14th season with Leinster. He’s been given a raw deal by Irish coaches over the years. There has been plenty of interest from Premiership and Top14 clubs over the years. He could easily have moved on, and most probably have been more handsomely rewarded and given more game time.
Ruddock’s standards and fitness haven’t dipped at all, witness him chasing the length of the pitch after the Stormers number ‘8′ Hacjivah Dayimani and then after Liam Turner made the recovering tackle, helping Ciaran Frawley to win the turnover.
With the emergence of Caelan Doris, Ruddock has had even less time in the Champions Cup, and with the reduction in the number of regular season matches, he’s suffered as much as anyone. He hasn’t played in the Champions Cup since coming on as a replacement in the final against La Rochelle last May and has been restricted to 10 URC games this season, taking his tally to a whopping 220.
No doubt being part of such a well-oiled machine, with its high-end coaching, standards in training and playing, and winning culture, is a big contributory factor. Many players know they’ll struggle to find such a set-up anywhere else.
Another interesting case study is Scott Penny. At any other province, the openside would surely have earned more game time and more exposure in the Champions Cup. But aside from being a Leinster boy through and through, Penny reasoned that if he could break into the Leinster backrow then he could break into the Irish backrow.
Like Ruddock, he played in both the games away to the Sharks and Stormers last season, and only made a slightly belated Champions Cup debut in the pool win over Racing 92 last January. But this week he’s back in UCD working with Lancaster and co, and may even push Nick Timoney for inclusion in the World Cup squad as back up to Josh van der Flier.
In any event, Ruddock and Penny, not to mention Deegan, Byrne, Kearney and many more, represent much of what Leinster are about and explains their enduringly consistent success. You rarely hear of grumbling within the camp. There are no toys chucked out of the pram.
Cullen has presided over a consistent and high achieving squad, but it’s his man management skills which are as impressive as anything. It’s quite a juggling act all right, and a remarkable one at that.
