Gerry Thornleytalks to Leinster hooker Bernard Jackman who reckons the province will have to fight fire with fire to meet the challenge in France

THE BATTLE lines will be drawn up front, all the more so on what is expected to be a quagmire of a pitch at a floodlit Stade Pierre-Antoine next Friday. A rematch with Gallic foes six days later on French soil is bound to have a different temperature to it and that much was made abundantly clear to Bernard Jackman as Leinster were completing last Saturday's 33-3 win at the RDS.

"Even their prop was saying: 'see you next week, see you next week' in the last few scrums. You expect it."

Hence, Jackman also expects Castres will definitely target Leinster in the scrum, all the more so at home and for a team that is struggling.

"So it wouldn't take a rocket scientist to work out that they're going to target that."

Clearly relishing the prospect, Jackman said: "that first scrum, you know it's going to be full on. You get an immediate answer as to where you are as a forward unit and how you respond to that.

"If you don't match them in aggression they're going to come after you there. But if you match them there then scrums can settle down pretty quickly."

Coupled with improved aggression and much greater ruthlessness at the breakdown, Jackman reckons the Leinster forwards need to up their performance level by 50 per cent.

"A lot of people were giving out about our back play but we didn't give them really quick ball by not being clinical and aggressive enough," he said, evidenced by "the amount of times Chris Whitaker had to go in and root for the ball".

That said, it has been Leinster's back play which has caused them most consternation this season. Admittedly they haven't been helped by a spate of injuries which has prevented them from playing the same backline two games running save for the opening two Heineken Cup games against Edinburgh and Wasps.

Perhaps not coincidentally, eight of their 10 tries in those successive bonus point wins were scored by backs .

Alas, Shane Horgan is rendered extremely doubtful this week after contracting the bug which has swept through their squad recently. At least this is offset by the anticipated availability of Isa Nacewa (pronounced 'Eesa Na-th-aywa' according to yesterday's helpful official release) and Felipe Contepomi, as well as Shane Jennings and Ronnie McCormack.

Nacewa hasn't played since breaking his forearm in the latter stages of the 19-13 win over the Ospreys in the third week of September, while Alan Gaffney, "technical consultant coach", was yesterday fairly confident Brian O'Driscoll's hamstring, though it prevented him from training yesterday, will recover in time.

In terms of Leinster's passing, Gaffney admitted the backs' performance against Castres was probably their worst of the season.

"A lot of the passing was thrown into the body, and a lot of that's a timing issue. We've chopped and changed, but that shouldn't affect what we did at the weekend. By passing the ball into the body and the shoulder we took all the pace out of what we were trying to do."

It was striking how regularly the first or second Leinster receiver, often Jonathan Sexton, had to take the ball into contact.

One of their better executed moves came on the hour, when, with noticeably more depth, Sexton swept around Horgan and Brian O'Driscoll to pierce the Castres defensive line before failing to link up with Luke Fitzgerald.

Gaffney is a product of Randwick, where the emphasis is very much on a flight alignment and taking the ball to the gainline. He's fond of saying as a coach he is 'not looking to re-invent the wheel' yet he's one of many Australian disciples of the revolutionary 1984 Wallabies who, with the three Ella brothers and David Campese, virtually re-invented backplay.

"Playing flat doesn't mean you start flat," he pointed out. "It's where you hit the ball. No, I don't like playing the game from depth. It looks pretty but it doesn't put any pressure on the opposition. You've got to vary your depth. Varying your depth and your alignment probably is the hardest thing for a backline to do and probably the hardest thing for a 10 to do, and at 12, because 10 sets the depth and 12 sets the alignment.

"Each and every coach has their own way of doing things but traditionally, I'd rather play the game flat."

He admits that with the ELVs teams such as Castres readily put an extra backrower in midfield off line-outs, which makes line breaks harder, all the more so with the maul being diluted, and all of which, he believes, is taking away from the game.

With a lack of depth at times came also a lack of width on Leinster's game. "We have been guilty of that and it is something we have addressed again. We've played with an entirely different backline two weeks in a row but we've got the ability, and we train and we know what were trying to achieve, but sometimes we do play too narrow in games and we're not backing ourselves to do things.

"At the same time, we know we've got to set up certain plays and certain patterns but, traditionally speaking, every play we play we want to have it as a strike play, we don't want to just set up targets (in midfield). To an extent that part has been a little bit disappointing but that being said, we did put a few things together that we were pretty happy with, but probably not enough."

LEINSTER (squad to face Castres Olympique): Forwards (15): Cian Healy, Ronan McCormack, Brian Blaney, Bernard Jackman, CJ van der Linde, Stan Wright, Trevor Hogan, Devin Toner, Cameron Jowitt, Malcolm O'Kelly, Rocky Elsom, Stephen Keogh, Shane Jennings, Seán OBrien, Jamie Heaslip. Backs (12): Chris Keane, Chris Whitaker, David Holwell, Jonathan Sexton, Rob Kearney, Simon Keogh, Felipe Contepomi, Luke Fitzgerald, Brian O'Driscoll, Shane Horgan, Girvan Dempsey, Isa Nacewa.

Referee: Dave Pearson (RFU).

Assistant referees: Ashley Rowden (RFU), Stuart Terheege (RFU), TMO: David Matthews.