Leinster are still troubled by the ghost of Christmas past

LEINSTER DON’T NEED to be reminded of the stakes in their European Champions Cup double-header against Harlequins.

It’s not quite win or bust for the two teams at the top of Pool 2 but last season’s results prove that one festive slip can send an entire campaign off course.

Twelve months ago Leinster travelled to Franklin’s Gardens as masters of their own destiny, and took a stranglehold on the pool when they ran in six tries against a shellshocked Northampton.

Stung by the 33-point defeat, the Saints arrived in the Aviva Stadium a week later with an axe to grind and left with a 19-8 win.

It was Leinster’s only defeat of the pool stages and although they still won the pool, when it came to the crunch the dropped points cost them dearly.

Instead of the comforts of a home quarter-final, their seeding as the “worst” winner saw them sent on the road to defending champions Toulon.

Game over.

“I think you only have to look back as far as last year and see how that defined our season,” Dave Kearney said on Monday when asked about the double-header’s importance.

“We lost at home and as a result got a pretty tough game away to Toulon in the quarters.

I think we know how important it’s going to be in terms of defining our season so these two games are massive for the club.

It hasn’t always been pretty but Leinster head to the Stoop on a six-game unbeaten run. A draw in Treviso and a slog against Ospreys don’t seem like ideal preparation but there have been mitigating circumstances: a slew of injuries and the loss of some of their biggest names during Ireland’s November Tests.

Harlequins haven’t exactly been setting the world alight themselves lately — they’ve lost five of their opening nine in the Aviva Premiership.

They also welcome back a number of their international stars, most notably Joe Marler and Chris Robshaw who return to a scrum that was pretty badly beaten up in defeat against Bath last weekend.

“Up until that point against Bath they were very dominant and one of the better scrums in the Premiership,” Leinster scrum coach Marco Caputo said yesterday.

“I was quite surprised to see that. You would have to think that Marler and Robshaw coming into that pack will shore things up there.

The flipside of having a poor performance for their scrum is it is going to be a massively highlighted area of their training focus this week. They are going to put in double the amount of time that they normally would.

“We need to make sure we are good in that area. Fortunately we’ve got lots of Irish lads coming back, in form, coming off a huge win against the Aussies and South Africans. We are hopeful it will rub off on the rest of the group as well.”

Both Kearney and Caputo know that Leinster will need to improve on Saturday’s kick-happy performance against the Ospreys.

“It was definitely not one of the prettiest games to watch. A lot of kicking, not much running,” Kearney said. “It was one of those nights.

“We got the result and we’ll take that. We’re six games unbeaten now with two European ones in there as well. We’ve to take that as a positive and use that momentum going into the next two weeks.”

For Caputo there are plenty of positives to be taken from the performances of Bryan Byrne and Tadhg Furlong in the front row.

It is going to give them a huge amount of confidence knowing that they have been in those pressure cooker situations and come out and delivered for us.

“That is hugely beneficial for the group as a whole. It builds good depth. It makes the guys coming back from international duty a little bit more comfortable knowing there is some good depth there.”

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