Seán Cronin ready to rise to challenge for position

It hasn't been the character of Leinster in recent years to have to hope for an 80-minute performance. European games beg greater certainty. But, so far, there has been little enough of that to allow their fans to fall into the swooning expectation of previous years.

Wasps’ threat this weekend is, on the back of the Pro12 campaign so far, as much about the Irish side’s patchy form as a nasty sting from the English Premiership side sitting fifth in the table.

Beaten at the breakdown by Munster and after Martin Moore's early exit against Zebre at the weekend with a shoulder injury – expected to take 12 weeks to clear up – light front- row backup seems only to exacerbate Leinster's struggle for their standard take-off. Seán Cronin, almost as important now as a wide channel runner as a hooker that bullocks his way up field with darts around the fringe, sees it as more of a challenge. Cronin is also a refreshingly straight talker.

“Everyone has come in today. It’s European week and there’s a certain edge about the place. It’s a big week,” he says.

“Definitely, I know we let ourselves down against Munster in our performance . . . that’s after giving us the kick up the arse we needed and we’re looking forward to this week.”

With Richardt Strauss now back after a prolonged hamstring injury, Cronin is loath to see himself as the first-pick hooker. The caution is born out of a canny intelligence. He knows how the rugby world works. But this week Strauss is the stick and starting against Wasps maybe the carrot for Cronin.

“We were just talking about it inside,” he says. “That it’s great to have Richardt back because I think I perform better when there’s someone there breathing down your neck, I think it brings the best out of me and him.

“We’ve worked well over the last few seasons coming up against each other. I just think it’s great to have him back and to have the competition. I never call myself first choice.”

Tweaked role

The frontrow make-up aside, Cronin’s tweaked role as one of the principle ball carriers also brings greater demands as well as cameos. Matt O’Connor has him running lines against backs with his explosive pace both effective and a crowd pleaser.

Few disagree that Seán O'Brien and Cian Healy did that job to high spec but their injuries may now be leaving Cronin largely on his own. But he disagrees and points to number eight Jamie Heaslip and his flanker, Rhys Ruddock, as also having the grunt to do it and do it well. "Rhys has been absolutely fantastic this season in terms of ball carrying and maybe we need another few guys to step up, Jamie's been there as well," he says. "We can't leave it to two or three guys, we've all got to pitch in and maybe we need to up the work rate in terms of that across the board with two massive games coming up."

While the injuries have hurt, the knock-on effect of the team being different every week has given continuity a knock on the head. Last weekend was a case in point. Prop Michael Bent came on. Mike Ross wasn't involved and he'll come back. Tadgh Furlong wasn't involved because he hadn't been feeling great during the week and pulled out late. Marty Moore got injured and Cian Healy is gone for some time. And that's just the frontrow.

Changes

“Yeah, it’s not ideal to have so many chopping and changing,” says Cronin. “But the area we’re looking to work on in training during the week is to try and get those combinations going so when it comes to the games, everyone is on the same wavelength.”

Optimistically, some of it was good for O'Connor and as a coach he'll look to that. Noel Reid came back, Ian Madigan seems okay after a late hit and Ben Te'o landed in Dublin after his season in League rugby. Do not expect to see Te'o this week.

"He only got in yesterday morning," said coach Leo Cullen. "We'll see how he looks in training. It might be a big ask (to play). He's come from playing the NRL final (where he made 33 tackles).

“I met Ben briefly when I watched the Rabbitohs train one day back in January. He’s a great physical specimen so we’re just going to get him assessed and on the field later on this afternoon. He hasn’t done a rugby union session in quite a long time so . . .”