ALL EYES WERE on Sam Prendergast at the RDS on Friday night and a confident outing from the young out-half in Leinster’s 33-7 defeat of Connacht ensured he remained the centre of attention post-match.
Discussions remain ongoing around Prendergast’s potential loan move to Connacht next season, with both camps seemingly unsure on how those negotiations will play out.
While it wasn’t the most complete Leinster performance Prendergast generally ran the attack well and had some lovely touches on what was just his fourth start of the season.
The former Ireland U20 star played a central role in two of Leinster’s three first-half tries, kicked all four of his conversion attempts and highlighted his versatility by playing the final 20 minutes at fullback.
Prendergast’s lovely show-and-go sent Jimmy O’Brien over for Leinster’s second try on 17 minutes and shortly after his smart slip pass to Jack Conan allowed the number eight break through a gap before Ciarán Frawley scored their third of the evening.
Connacht boss Pete Wilkins said while Prendergast was not a done deal, signing an out-half is a priority for the province ahead of next season with JJ Hanrahan facing a lengthy spell on the sidelines due to an ACL injury.
If Prendergast doesn’t move west, the province have scope to recruit an out-half from outside of Ireland.
“Look, if he is coming, I certainly don’t know about it at this point and that’s not trying to straight-bat it. That’s where we are at,” Wilkins said.
“We have obviously lost JJ for the best part of next season, certainly until the new year anyway. I think it’s important we get another ‘10’ in, partly as back-up to Jack Carty but also as competition.
I think both JJ and Jack have stepped up this year in terms of having that competition with each other, so I think it is important (to sign an out-half).
“Who that is going to be, I honestly don’t know. We are at the stage of compiling a shortlist. That can be people outside of Ireland. We have scope to do that for something like this.
“I think it will be a short-term agreement or a medium-term loan, but you also look in Ireland and that means for something like that to come to fruition, you need the IRFU aligned with whatever the chats are.
“You need any of the parent clubs, the other provinces to be aligned as well, so it’s not a straightforward process. But we definitely want to bring someone in and we will see where we go over the next couple of weeks.”
Friday night showcased why Connacht are so keen to sign the 21-year-old, and why Leinster want to keep him on board for next season.
Leinster head coach Leo Cullen was pleased with the Kildare native’s performance on the night and indicated the out-half could well stay with his home province.
“Yeah, definitely. When you’ve got young players, 20/21 years of age and you’re sort of in the Academy cycle or you’re stepping into the senior ranks of the team, as I’ve said, you have to keep picking them,” Cullen said.
“I know lots of people would love us to pick the exact same team all the time, but unfortunately that’s not how it is because then when you need to fall back on players or whatever that is, have competition for places and all the rest, that’s what you need.
“It requires us to be brave at different times and pick young players, and listen, I thought Sam did lots of good things.
“Every young player, all the players have things to work on, so it’s just about improving all the time. We don’t just want to have players ready to play at this level, it’s to play at the levels beyond that as well – be top-end international players.
“That’s a big part of what we are trying to do here. But yeah, it was another positive step for Sam and his development to get through 80 minutes.
“You saw lots of positive involvements during the course of the game. He was obviously 10 for the first 60 minutes and then even he moves to 15 as well towards the tail end of the game. So, yeah, it’s another positive outing for him.”
While Connacht’s season is now over, Leinster can look forward to an Aviva Stadium quarter-final date with Richie Murphy’s Ulster on Saturday.
The province expect to go into the game with no fresh injury concerns. Cullen confirmed that backrower Conan was substituted as a precaution after feeling some tightness in the second half, and added some promising news on Garry Ringrose – who hasn’t played any rugby since Ireland’s Six Nations defeat of Scotland on 16 March.
The centre received a positive update after seeing a specialist on Thursday and could return to full contact training this week, potentially coming into contention to feature at the weekend.
