FORMER LEINSTER HOOKER James Tracy believes his former teammates may find it a challenge this week to recreate the emotional pitch from which they harnessed their destruction of La Rochelle in their Champions Cup quarter-final last month.
The eastern province face English Premiership leaders Northampton Saints on what will be a landmark day for Irish club rugby at Croke Park on Saturday, with 82,000 tickets sold for the first provincial game at GAA Headquarters since Leinster’s 2009 Heineken Cup semi-final victory over Munster.
Cian Healy is the only current Leinster squad member who featured in that era-shifting victory 15 years ago and on Wendesday’s Rugby Weekly Extra podcast for The 42 subscribers, host Gavan Casey asked Tracy if there was any danger that Leinster’s Croke Park first-timers could “overthink” the occasion given the magnitude of the event that awaits them in three days’ time.
Tracy, who acknowledged that there was a special buzz among his former colleagues ahead of Saturday’s semi on Jones’ Road, stressed his belief that neither the stadium nor the historic hue to the game would have a prohibitive affect on Leinster’s performance.
Instead, he posed, “the biggest challenge for this group is having to climb the mountain again.”
“You train and you play hoping to have a game like they had against La Rochelle,” said Tracy. “And then it’s kind of like, ‘How do you do that again?’
“Like, every week, you plan to play well but the reality is you might have a 20- or 30-minute patch where everything goes like you planned — while in that La Rochelle game it seemed more like 50 minutes where everything they had planned was working.
"The emotional side is a huge part of the game"
"I don't think it's possible to stay at the summit, I think any top coach knows that"@jamestracy02 on how Leo Cullen will look to get the best from his players on Saturday 🏉
“So, it’s more the psychological side of it: ‘how do we repeat that? How do we execute and be as accurate with the detail our own plays?’ But also just the in-motion, in-the-moment, instinct plays and actually catching the ball from those offloads or getting the body through contact.
“A lot of that squad would have been in France at the World Cup, they’ve played in these huge games — and won and lost them. I don’t feel the stadium itself will make them nervous or overwhelm them on the occasion. I feel like it’ll be a positive in terms of the excitement levels. But it’s, ‘How do we get it as right for a semi-final as we got it for the quarter-final?’
“Is training going as well? Are you as sharp? It’s so, so hard, and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a team back it up with the same level of performance.
It’s always the case that you don’t want to play your final too early. Maybe they have played that best game of the year and now it’s just about trying to find as close as they can get to that again. And will that be enough? We’ll find out.
Tracy’s initial thoughts on the psychological challenge facing Leinster prompted The 42′s Murray Kinsella to pull up some recent quotes from the province’s forwards and scrum coach, Robyn McBride, who appeared to hint at something similar.
“Each individual is different,” McBryde said earlier this week. “Some players — especially the big-game players — are not interested in some of the week-in, week-out stuff. They want to be on the big stage. They get energised by being on the big stage.
“To them, the level of opposition warrants a reaction from them and they want to be tested against the best.
“From my experience — coaching experience as well — you know the players, even during the week, they’ve got so much confidence in their own ability, they’ll just turn it on on a Saturday.”
Kinsella put it to Tracy: “I think you could read that and think, ‘That’s a really worrying comment — because he saying that players don’t care about turning up for a URC game?’ But maybe he’s just trying to get at that sentiment you’ve just expressed, that the number of times you can get to that place is finite.”
“A hundred per cent,” Tracy replied. “So, Stuart Lancaster used to use Mount Everest. As in, imagine Mount Everest in your mind. The summit would be the La Rochelle performance.
“Stuart would always say, ‘Our goal is to not drop below Base Camp. Anything above Base Camp, you’re going to win the game.’ But he’d say that you can’t drop below Base Camp no matter who you’re playing against. You’re never going to have a perfect game, but Base Camp is your floor in performance.
“It’s finding that within yourself, to be able to get yourself up. It’s not like you don’t care. You could do all the same things and sometimes, it just doesn’t happen for you.
“But when the occasion is huge, and when you have beaten these rivals who had beaten you up and caused you so much pain, there’s going to be an emotional dump after that, and internal pat on the back. Complacency is the silent killer.
“So, it’s making sure for this group that they know that Base Camp won’t be enough this weekend. It’s finding enough in them to get themselves back up to be able to perform to the level that they did.
“The emotional side is a huge, huge part of the game and it’s probably something that isn’t given enough credence because it’s so hard to quantify.”
Elsewhere on the podcast, Tracy, Kinsella and Casey provided a technical breakdown of Saturday’s semi-final, with Tracy also giving his thoughts on Leinster’s squad selection for their disappointing fortnight in South Africa — and fielding an email from one very disgruntled Leinster season-ticket holder.
"Leinster will have trained against this for eight years."
"It's very hard to carry the ball against."@jamestracy02 looks at how Leinster will deal with Northampton's 13:2 split in defence 🏉
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Can Leinster recreate the emotional pitch of their victory against La Rochelle?
FORMER LEINSTER HOOKER James Tracy believes his former teammates may find it a challenge this week to recreate the emotional pitch from which they harnessed their destruction of La Rochelle in their Champions Cup quarter-final last month.
The eastern province face English Premiership leaders Northampton Saints on what will be a landmark day for Irish club rugby at Croke Park on Saturday, with 82,000 tickets sold for the first provincial game at GAA Headquarters since Leinster’s 2009 Heineken Cup semi-final victory over Munster.
Cian Healy is the only current Leinster squad member who featured in that era-shifting victory 15 years ago and on Wendesday’s Rugby Weekly Extra podcast for The 42 subscribers, host Gavan Casey asked Tracy if there was any danger that Leinster’s Croke Park first-timers could “overthink” the occasion given the magnitude of the event that awaits them in three days’ time.
Tracy, who acknowledged that there was a special buzz among his former colleagues ahead of Saturday’s semi on Jones’ Road, stressed his belief that neither the stadium nor the historic hue to the game would have a prohibitive affect on Leinster’s performance.
Instead, he posed, “the biggest challenge for this group is having to climb the mountain again.”
“You train and you play hoping to have a game like they had against La Rochelle,” said Tracy. “And then it’s kind of like, ‘How do you do that again?’
“Like, every week, you plan to play well but the reality is you might have a 20- or 30-minute patch where everything goes like you planned — while in that La Rochelle game it seemed more like 50 minutes where everything they had planned was working.
“So, it’s more the psychological side of it: ‘how do we repeat that? How do we execute and be as accurate with the detail our own plays?’ But also just the in-motion, in-the-moment, instinct plays and actually catching the ball from those offloads or getting the body through contact.
“A lot of that squad would have been in France at the World Cup, they’ve played in these huge games — and won and lost them. I don’t feel the stadium itself will make them nervous or overwhelm them on the occasion. I feel like it’ll be a positive in terms of the excitement levels. But it’s, ‘How do we get it as right for a semi-final as we got it for the quarter-final?’
“Is training going as well? Are you as sharp? It’s so, so hard, and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a team back it up with the same level of performance.
Tracy’s initial thoughts on the psychological challenge facing Leinster prompted The 42′s Murray Kinsella to pull up some recent quotes from the province’s forwards and scrum coach, Robyn McBride, who appeared to hint at something similar.
“Each individual is different,” McBryde said earlier this week. “Some players — especially the big-game players — are not interested in some of the week-in, week-out stuff. They want to be on the big stage. They get energised by being on the big stage.
“To them, the level of opposition warrants a reaction from them and they want to be tested against the best.
“From my experience — coaching experience as well — you know the players, even during the week, they’ve got so much confidence in their own ability, they’ll just turn it on on a Saturday.”
Kinsella put it to Tracy: “I think you could read that and think, ‘That’s a really worrying comment — because he saying that players don’t care about turning up for a URC game?’ But maybe he’s just trying to get at that sentiment you’ve just expressed, that the number of times you can get to that place is finite.”
“A hundred per cent,” Tracy replied. “So, Stuart Lancaster used to use Mount Everest. As in, imagine Mount Everest in your mind. The summit would be the La Rochelle performance.
“Stuart would always say, ‘Our goal is to not drop below Base Camp. Anything above Base Camp, you’re going to win the game.’ But he’d say that you can’t drop below Base Camp no matter who you’re playing against. You’re never going to have a perfect game, but Base Camp is your floor in performance.
“It’s finding that within yourself, to be able to get yourself up. It’s not like you don’t care. You could do all the same things and sometimes, it just doesn’t happen for you.
“But when the occasion is huge, and when you have beaten these rivals who had beaten you up and caused you so much pain, there’s going to be an emotional dump after that, and internal pat on the back. Complacency is the silent killer.
“So, it’s making sure for this group that they know that Base Camp won’t be enough this weekend. It’s finding enough in them to get themselves back up to be able to perform to the level that they did.
“The emotional side is a huge, huge part of the game and it’s probably something that isn’t given enough credence because it’s so hard to quantify.”
Elsewhere on the podcast, Tracy, Kinsella and Casey provided a technical breakdown of Saturday’s semi-final, with Tracy also giving his thoughts on Leinster’s squad selection for their disappointing fortnight in South Africa — and fielding an email from one very disgruntled Leinster season-ticket holder.
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