LEINSTER’S LATEST BYRNE experiment delivered some promising results as brothers Harry and Ross combined nicely in the province’s 29-7 bonus-point win over the Ospreys.

With Ross in his usual role at out-half, younger brother Harry shifted back into inside centre for his first senior start in the 12 shirt, a move which saw him take home the player of the match award following a productive evening in the Leinster midfield, the combination providing enough encouraging flashes to suggest it may be a move worth revisiting.

It could even help kick-start what has been a frustrating campaign for the younger Byrne brother, a series of unfortunately timed injuries seeing him struggle to kick on after taking some major strides last season.

“I was just happy to play to be honest,” Byrne said.

“I hadn’t actually played 80 minutes this season yet. Leo said it to me earlier in the week, I played 60 minutes off then bench there last week (against Edinburgh) and felt comfortable enough, so he wanted to go again this week.

“So yeah, I was happy enough to play there and obviously I’m used to playing with Ross, I know him quite well at this stage.”

With the two brothers more accustomed to competing for the same shirt, it’s an interesting twist to watch them sharing the pitch together, the two linking up well against the Welsh side and sharing the play-making duties.

“It’s great, we can kind of mix and match in there and do each other’s jobs as well,” he added.

I suppose, we know each other so well. We live together and we talk about the game the whole time really, we’re constantly talking about what’s going on during the week. So yeah, it feels quite comfortable for both of us to do it, and the mixing and match part of it just makes both of our jobs easier really, we’re able to help each other out when needed.”

While Harry will have been happy with his evening’s work, head coach Leo Cullen admitted it was far from a perfect performance by his team as they struggled to put a limited Ospreys side to bed.

Having dominated the play in the first period, Leinster were just 15-0 up at half time, with some major impact from their bench helping them eventually secure the bonus point as conditions worsened in the second half.

“The performance, there was plenty of effort there, a little bit inaccurate at times, I thought,” Cullen said.

“We created a lot of opportunites, had a lot of possession and camped in the Ospreys line for a fair bit of the first half, so we managed to control that field position pretty well.

“Didn’t always execute that well, I thought, a lot of cheap turnovers that leads to scrums and some of the scrums then slowed the game quick a bit in terms of the resets.

But two tries in each half, obviously the conditions deteriorated pretty badly in the second half, which made life difficult for us. But credit to the players, I thought they stuck at it pretty well considering we did squander a few chances, so it was important for us to get a bonus point with the amount of possession and territory that we had over the course of the game. 

“Ospreys battled away like we knew they would. If you remember this time last year, they were 19-3 down against us and came back to win the game 24-19, so we all had that in the back of our mind I think. 

“It’s important to get a win, and a bonus point, particularly when you consider the conditions.” 

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