Pro12 (Round 18) Leinster v Cardiff Blues (Saturday @3pm)

Leinster side;
Leinster Rugby (caps in brackets):

15. Joey Carbery (16)
14. Adam Byrne (18)
13. Rory O’Loughlin (16)
12. Noel Reid (78)
11. Isa Nacewa (164) CAPTAIN
10. Ross Byrne (18)
9. Luke McGrath (69)
1. Cian Healy (167)
2. Richardt Strauss (141)
3. Michael Bent (81)
4. Ross Molony (38)
5. Hayden Triggs (25)
6. Dan Leavy (32)
7. Josh van der Flier (38)
8. Rhys Ruddock (125)

16. James Tracy (35)
17. Peter Dooley (33)
18. Mike Ross (148)
19. Mick Kearney (18)
20. Max Deegan (3)
21. Jamison Gibson-Park (22)
22. Tom Daly (6)
23. Fergus McFadden (146)


Cardiff Blues
15 Matthew Morgan
14 Alex Cuthbert
13 Reybold Lee-lo
12 Steve Shingler
11 Blaine Scully
10 Gareth Anscombe
9 Tomos Williams
8 Nick Williams
7 Josh Navidi
6 Macauley Cook
5 Jarrad Hoeata
4 George Earle
3 Anton Peikrishvili
2 Kristian Dacey
1 Corey Domachowski

Subs - Matthew Rees, Gethin Jenkins, Scott Andrews, Sion Bennett, Ellis Jenkins, Lloyd Williams, Willis Halaholo, Tom James

Cardiff have the stronger bench, if their starting lineup and keep parity then this could be a close game with the imputis that will come onto the field towards the end.

Always liked Navidi as a flanker, he'll be good at the breakdown as usual in the RDS and it will be an interesting contest for VDF and Leavy.

Perfect opportunity for a couple of these players to put their hands up for the 1/4 final squad the weekend after.

Is Jack Conan injured? Strange omission.

The stock pictures used for the injury update earlier in the week had him training in a 'heaslip' top. Maybe the medics spotted it and assumed concussion.
As far as I know he's a healthy scratch. They do like this Deegan kid coming through.... the next big thing on the academy's backrow production line.

Great game.

Leinster squeak it with their seconds. Hard luck Cardiff - could have won it there but Leinster too good to give it up.

Any standouts for Leinster? How is Molony playing? Need to know where our next 2nd row is coming from if Donnacha is off to retirement rugby in Paris!

The majority of the team were quite poor. From memory Molony had a number of simple ball handling errors, possibly the poorest game I've seen from him. But he wasn't alone. All 3 tries by Cardiff were very well taken when they capitalised on Leinster errors.

Leinster didn't give them enough respect. We turned down easy points way too often instead of building a lead and treating it as a full-on professional match. We also defended way to narrow and this was exploited consistently. Considering we'll be up against a side with ridiculous threats in the outside channels this coming week the signs are ominous.

thebandwagonsociety wrote:

Leinster ... turned down easy points way too often instead of building a lead and treating it as a full-on professional match.  We also defended way to narrow and this was exploited consistently.  Considering we'll be up against a side with ridiculous threats in the outside channels this coming week the signs are ominous.

Always nice to give the upcoming enemy a few fake weaknesses to keep 'em busy with in training

To be fair, Leinster are still beating everyone with a team of kids.