LAST UPDATE | 26 Apr 2022

ACROSS THE LAST two years, Leinster – like most professional sports organisations – have become well accustomed to dealing with disruption.

Those instincts came in handy last week when Leo Cullen’s touring squad faced an unexpected shortage at hooker ahead of their United Rugby Championship meeting with the Sharks in Durban.

Ireland international Rónan Kelleher had been named to start at the Kings Park Stadium, but suffered a shoulder injury in the days leading up to the game. Fellow hooker James Tracy had also emerged as a doubt with a neck problem. Cue some quick thinking and some hurried phone calls. Kelleher would drop out of the team, with Academy hookers John McKee and Lee Barron both winning their first caps in his absence.

Leinster went on to lose 28-23 to a strong Sharks side, but Cullen was pleased with how the likes of debutants McKee, Barron and second row Brian Deeny came through the occasion.

“It’s a great experience for some of the guys over here,” Cullen says, speaking from the team’s current base in Cape Town.

“We’ve got some relatively experienced players in the group who are leading the young guys well and there are some young guys adding experience or getting experience for the first time.

“The two hookers as an example, making their debuts, pretty incredible really, against a World Cup-winning hooker (Bongi Mbonambi), a Lions Series-winning hooker as well, in the Sharks, in a pretty formidable front-row they have as well. Brian Deeny in the second row, very positive as well for him making his debut.”

Barron had a particularly interesting week, failing to make the cut in the initial 31-man squad that travelled to South Africa only to be flown out on short notice.

The 21-year-old came of the bench in Durban to go toe-to-toe with World Cup winner Bongi Mbonambi, playing 14 minutes and receiving a yellow card as Leinster’s penalty count rose under intense Sharks pressure.

“I was calling Lee on what was it, the Wednesday, because James (Tracy) had taken a knock as well and we were probably a bit more a bit more worried about James (than Kelleher) at the time, but anyway the two of them weren’t right. We held off on James, we thought Rónan was going to start and then just on the Friday we didn’t take the chance.

So fair play to the lads, they stepped in well. We arrived on Monday, trained Tuesday and Wednesday and it was after that session at lunchtime on Wednesday that I gave Lee a ring and said: ‘Have you got your passport ready?’ And then we got him a flight, so he was on a flight at 6pm that Wednesday evening.

“It’s three flights to get to Durban so he got in on the Thursday and before he knows it he’s on the bench and flying into Bongi (Mbonambi) in the front-row, then he gets yellow carded for some team infringements and he gets a break.

“But fair play. It was a great effort from him and delighted to see him make his debut and hopefully he can go on to achieve great things in his career. It was an interesting start for him.”

Mbonambi was man of the match as the Sharks beat Leinster on Saturday. Steve Haag / INPHO Steve Haag / INPHO / INPHO

Leinster have now moved on to Cape Town ahead of their meeting with the Stormers, a game which sees the league’s current top two teams go head-to-head on Saturday evening.

After finding life difficult around the set-piece against the Sharks, the province are expecting an open game against the more attack-minded Stormers, a side who strive to keep the ball alive and will look to get their offloading game going.

Kelleher won’t feature, having flown back to Dublin following that shoulder injury, which Cullen describes as “pretty minor.” Loosehead prop Andrew Porter will also be rested, as the province look to keep their key men fresh for the trip to take on Leicester Tigers in the quarter-finals of the Heineken Champions Cup on 7 May.

It will be another experimental-looking Leinster side this weekend, which won’t sit well with some observers. Cullen faced some uncomfortable questions after the Sharks game, with some sections of the South African media unhappy with the youthful squad Leinster brought over and the lack of star names on show.

The Leinster boss says he understands the disappointment, but with the province needing just two points from their remaining two fixtures to secure top spot in the final league table, they have earned the luxury of being able to manage their resources accordingly. 

“I understand that (disappointment). Like, if you’re sitting in their shoes, of course, but there’s lots of different things going on,” Cullen says.

For the South African media or broadcaster, yeah, maybe they want the star names. The way the system works you can only squeeze so much out of our players and our players are our assets at the end of the day, aren’t they?

“If you have your November internationals, your Six Nations internationals and your summer tour to New Zealand, so there’s X amount of internationals, so how many more games are you going to get out of them? You’ve your four European games, plus your play-off games, and if you want to be successful that’s five games in Europe.

“So you don’t need to be a genius to figure out that the games are racking up pretty quickly, versus the South African internationals who obviously (weren’t) available at the start of the season during the Rugby Championship. Teams are going to be affected at different times of the year, as we also know.

“Like, I understand the debate about it, but we just have to do what is best for the group. So we can’t get too bogged down by it.

“For our guys, we were confident that they would give a decent account of themselves so the challenge for us is to try do it again this week.”  

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