RUGBY:COMING A week before their Heineken Cup semi-final against Toulouse at the Aviva, next Saturday's penultimate Magners League game away to Aironi would appear to offer Leinster an opportune time to rest many of their frontline players.
But Joe Schmidt intimated in the aftermath of their bonus point win over Ulster that they may not be of a mind to unduly risk their chances of securing a home league semi-final.
As they seek to complete a unique Magners League- Heineken Cup double, that home semi-final remains within their control, although it could require two more five-point hauls to achieve it. Schmidt is also of a mind to maintain their rhythm.
“I think there will be a number of them on display,” said the Leinster coach of his frontliners. “I think at the moment they’ve only been back in for a couple of weeks since the Six Nations, so to get them all together is not the worst thing either.
“If we can do that for Toulouse and maybe, you know, Glasgow, we can mix and match as those games come up because we’ll have a clearer picture of whether we’ll have another game in the Heineken Cup after Toulouse, so really I’m not looking too much further ahead than these two games.”
There were no injury scares arising from Saturday night’s exertions, with Schmidt confirming that Leo Cullen and Kevin McLaughlin, who had another big game, were none the worse for their clash of heads.
Likewise, Shane Jennings was just a bit weary after his first game in two months when replaced by Cian Healy.
“Richie Murphy on the sideline was getting sick of Cian asking if he could go on as a backrow replacement and so with three minutes to go we thought we could risk that.”
Asked if Healy might have a future there, Schmidt laughed. “I’m sure if you ask him he does!”
Such derbies also highlight the focus on Ireland’s World Cup squad, and in this regard no Leinster player did his reputation any harm, least of all two-try, man-of-the-match Shane Horgan.
“I thought he was offering more than just aerially tonight, I thought his chip kick was only eye-height for him, so it was a nice tidy one for him to take and finish off.
“I thought defensively he made a couple of really nice tackles early on in that first half as well and he marshalled the defence well from that perspective. He’s kind of coming back after having those six weeks off as well, so he’s somewhere near the middle of the season when he was flying for us.”
In stark contrast, Brian McLaughlin was clearly still angry about Ulster’s initially supine performance.
“It’s very disappointing for us. We came down here with high hopes, especially after last week, and in the first 25 minutes we got blown off the park. So it’s exceptionally disappointing, where it leaves us in the league – we’ve got Connacht on Friday night and we’ve got to be up and at it and make sure we’re doing our damnedest to get as many points as we possibly can.
“You’ve got to give a lot of credit to Leinster,” he admitted. “They’ve shown exactly why they’re the best team in Europe. They played exceptionally well, they held onto the ball, we again, like last week, created at times but again we couldn’t finish things off, we kept turning over the ball.
“From that point of view it was very disappointing that we didn’t learn that lesson from last week, but we’re still creating and that’s something we have got to keep working on.
“We want to play attractive rugby, we want to play creative rugby and, you know, we’re just squandering opportunities.”
