RUGBY:IDEALLY, LEINSTER want to be playing four knock-out games in the last five weeks of their season, culminating in the daunting prospect of a semi-final and two finals in a row. But for that to happen, they have to negotiate what amounts to another one or two win-or-bust games, beginning tomorrow against Ulster at the RDS (8 pm).
Leinster lie in fourth place, the last of the play-off spots, three points behind second-placed Ulster and with the breath of Cardiff Blues and Scarlets hot on their necks, just four and five points adrift of Joe Schmidt’s men. To have any hope of overhauling Ulster and the Ospreys to earn a home semi-final, victory is imperative, and even with games against Aironi (away) and Glasgow Warriors (home), defeat could well prove non-negotiable. Hence, Schmidt likens this match to a quarter-final.
“If we lose this weekend we can’t get a home semi at all, (and) if we lose this weekend we’ve lost control of our own destiny,” said Schmidt at Leinster’s base at Riverview yesterday. “If we do qualify (for the semis) it will be because of someone else slipping up, not us doing what we’ve needed to do.”
Furthermore, whereas Leinster are competing on two fronts (and Munster already have one foot in the league semi-finals) the three Welsh contenders only have the league to concentrate on. So it is that a refreshed Scarlets – idle last weekend – lurk in the valleys for a Munster side who came through that exhausting trek to Brive, while the Cardiff Blues travel to the Sportsground. And with the Ospreys taking on the Dragons, Schmidt and Leinster cannot anticipate any favours from elsewhere.
“Yeah, and I think it makes us more vulnerable,” said Schmidt. “Munster are not vulnerable at all really because they’re so far ahead and that’s a real credit to the way they’ve gone through their season and got the points on the board early, we didn’t do that unfortunately and that means we’ve got to fight that much harder at this time of year.
“Munster can go away to Scarlets and rotate quite a few guys and feel quite comfortable with a loss and losing bonus point – although I’ve never seen a Munster man content with a loss of any sort. I’d love to see Munster win and keeping winning, to be honest, because they’re going to be where they’re going to be and that’s on top, (so) if we could get some help from them that’d be great.”
It’s been a rollercoaster first season at the helm for Schmidt, who reflected on those three away league defeats in September which has reduced their elbow room, and admitted, with typical self-effacing humour: “I think you learn more about the character of your players when times were a bit tough, I don’t know how the players felt but I certainly thought it was a bit tough then. Certainly I was being told by a lot of people that times were tough – thankfully not my employers – but another couple of weeks and that might have even appeared.
“But for me the investment in that period was worthwhile in the long term but at the same time I think I could have done a better job, I didn’t understand probably the players and the player welfare programme and how I could best balance that. It was all totally new to me and it was a very difficult beast to manage.”
No squad has carried off a domestic league/Heineken Cup double since Wasps in 2004 and with each passing year such a double appears to be become more difficult. Faced with an expanded Top 14 play-off last season, ie a domestic quarter-final ensuring five successive knock-out games, Guy Noves simply decreed it “impossible” and rested the majority of his frontliners for the French semi-final defeat to Perpignan.
This year, they lead the Top 14, and are thus in line to avoid a quarter-final, while Noves is liable to field a second-string team for Toulouse’s marquee fixture against Toulon in the Stade Velodrome in Marseilles this weekend.
“It’s going to be carnage, to a degree,” admitted Schmidt in reference to Leinster maintaining their twin ambitions, “because we’re already beaten up and that makes you vulnerable and if you do become so vulnerable in one competition that we might slip out of that competition, therefore the depth of the squad will be tested to a degree as well.
“In the really big games if you haven’t got your top quality players playing – your international players – then it’s a great opportunity for younger players but it’s also a lot of pressure on a young player. Having said that there were 27 different players used in the Heineken Cup so far this season and they’ve all stood up and done a pretty good job even when the more experienced players haven’t been there.”
They’ve also used 50 players in the league, but necessity being the mother of invention, Schmidt says there won’t be too much mixing tomorrow, and having Aironi away next week prior to the Heineken Cup semi-final is probably the preferred order from a Leinster perspective. That said, Gordon D’Arcy, Brian O’Driscoll and Isa Nacewa are three of about five players nursing knocks from last weekend’s shuddering bruiser with Leicester, which not alone has thrown his selection plans up in the air, but virtually rendered training this week non-existent.
Ulster, of course, have a day’s less turnaround. Like many watching last Sunday, Schmidt felt that had Adam D’Arcy held onto the pass and put Simon Danielli over, and Ulster made it 20-all, it could have been a different game. Furthermore, with only one trophy now on offer, he doesn’t expect Ulster to be mentally scarred.
“I think they’ve got a bit more resilient than that from my personal experience. They have a wealth of experience from around the globe, a really international flavour to them. We were very disappointed after Munster, for example, but that kind of helps your resolve sometimes and your character is often shown after the tough times, not the good times. They definitely have character in their side.”
