RUGBY:LEINSTER'S 45-20 defeat at Parc y Scarlets on September 1st bears little relevance ahead of tomorrow's lunch-time meeting at the same venue simply because the personnel in blue will be radically different.
The Scarlets ran in seven tries that night, with powerful 20-year-old winger George North particularly destructive, but it was a Leinster XV missing Brian O’Driscoll and his fellow international contingent. That said, the Scarlets didn’t have their quality 10-12 combination of Rhys Priestland and Jonathan Davies.
The Welsh club’s 49-16 defeat at Stade Marcel Michelin last weekend has been largely put down to Irish referee Peter Fitzgibbon showing winger Morgan Stoddart a red card in the 37th minute, following two yellows. The ERC judicial officer Antony Davies yesterday “concluded that neither offence involved foul play directed at an opponent and that no additional sanction was necessary”.
“They capitalised with two or three tries in the area where Stodds would have been defending,” said Llanelli coach Simon Easterby. “We still produced good rugby when down to 14 men – 13-16 at half-time we were well in the game but losing a man they capitalised on that.”
Leinster coach Joe Schmidt believes the Scarlets will be aiming to atone for the hammering inflicted by Clermont Auvergne with a similar approach to how they dismantled the second-string Leinster side in September. “They’ve a lot of guys who are game breakers,” he said yesterday. “I think they feed off each other very well, you have to be able to stop their momentum and their flow and their depth. Stop it to a degree that they won’t get the number of points on the board they were getting earlier in the season. The 45 points they got against us was more flow than ebb.
“They’ve been on the wrong side of a few results even with that flying start they got. They were down at half-time in the west and we know that is a tough place to play and then they managed to score four unanswered scores in the second half so they are the sort of team that can score a lot of points quickly.”
Gordon D’Arcy is fit to return from a rib injury that has stunted the start to his 15th season as a professional. “The ribs are fully healed,” Schmidt continued.
Reading Schmidt’s mind is a precarious pursuit, but the feeling is Fergus McFadden may be shifted to the wing, at Andrew Conway’s expense, with D’Arcy starting alongside O’Driscoll.
That would be the only change from the side that struggled to see off Exeter at the RDS last Saturday.
The news on Rob Kearney is not so good. He has yet to recover from a back injury sustained against Connacht on September 28th so Ian Madigan, with plenty of assistance from Isa Nacewa, should again patrol the back-field.
Quinn Roux, the South African lock, is also recovered from a collarbone damaged in the warm-up before the 34-6 defeat in Galway.
It was announced yesterday Brad Thorn has signed a 12-month contract with New Zealand franchise the Highlanders ahead of next year’s Super Rugby competition. That significantly lessens the chances of the 37-year-old returning to Leinster when his stint in Japan is completed.
Damien Browne is currently partnering captain Leo Cullen in the Leinster secondrow despite the presence of Devin Toner and arrival of Roux and Tom Denton.
It was also revealed yesterday Luke Fitzgerald is due to return from a neck injury in late November and Seán O’Brien could also be available at that time.
