THE WEEKEND AFTER Springboks captain Siya Kolisi sat in their coaching box for the Rugby Championship clash with Argentina, new Leinster skipper Caelan Doris did the same as his side recorded a 34-6 bonus-point win over the Dragons.
While Kolisi lasted only one half up with Rassie Erasmus and his assistants, moving down to the bench for the second half, it appears that Doris went the distance and offered a few words of wisdom to his Leinster brain trust.
Ireland number eight Doris has yet to play for his province this season but could make his return away to Benetton next weekend.
“We just wanted to give him an education as to some of the language as he’s coming back in, the captaincy piece, that he has a clear understanding of what that looks like,” said Leinster head coach Leo Cullen post-match.
“Alignment is probably the best word. He’s got some good thoughts and he’s able to give a good view at half time which is what you want from your leaders.”
Overall, Cullen was happy with the outcome tonight even if the Leinster performance was scrappy.
“Listen, we’re pleased to get the win, five points, that’s the most important bit at this stage of the season,” he said.
“Going into the game, we would have been very conscious of Dragons and how they made a lot of improvements. We watched their pre-season games and they’re showing a real physical edge to the way they’re playing the game and they fronted up.
“They had some chances early in the game which they didn’t take, I thought our guys scrambled well defensively. We get into this bit of a kick battle and when you get into those types of battles you need to be very accurate in terms of your execution. In the first half, we probably weren’t quite, they disrupted us at the breakdown a few times.”
“It was a little bit of a frustrating first half, even though we scored two decent tries. Second half, the focus was a bit clearer, there was a bit more intent in terms of our carry and work at the breakdown, which gave us some better opportunities.
“To score six tries, overall we’re pretty pleased. We’ve chopped and changed our team a little bit in the first two rounds. We talked about the three academy players starting last week, two of them started today, two more came off the bench in Fintan [Gunne] and Aitzol [King], so there’s lots of positives in that sense.
“We build towards next week. Because it’s week to week at the moment, we’ll have some guys come back into the mix next week. You saw Joe [McCarthy] and Josh [van der Flier] coming off the bench, the Emerging Ireland guys depart tomorrow, so we have a number of the international guys coming in next week.
“Specifically today, if you’d offered it to us before the game, we’d be delighted.”
Stand-in skipper Jack Conan delivered another strong showing in the back row for Leinster, but it was Max Deegan who was named player of the match after his excellent performance.
Deegan was impressive last weekend against Edinburgh too.
“It’s great, he got announced and then came up with that lineout steal,” said Cullen.
“Some of that pressure he puts in the air, he does well for his try to see that space. He spins out of that tackle down the left edge and had lots of good moments.
