Tigers arrive with dangerous momentum

HEINEKEN CUP QUARTER-FINAL:MOMENTUM IS huge in rugby, and whereas Leicester have it, Leinster have had to scratch for it. The Tigers were not as heavily indisposed by the Six Nations, and arrive in Dublin for tomorrow's Heineken Cup quarter-final on the back of nine wins out of 10 and seeking a third consecutive Saturday teatime win on the road, whereas Leinster have effectively had one loss to rediscover their rhythm.

Back in December and January, when they first saw off Clermont and then got bonus-point wins over Saracens and Racing Metro, Leinster were on a roll.

It was the meat of their season, the uninterrupted two-month segment which the provincial coaches probably enjoy the most.

But all things considered, Leinster could be in a worse place, given their Irish contingent returned buoyed by the win over England and relatively unscathed.

“Certainly after the autumn series we were pretty well down out the back,” reflected Joe Schmidt yesterday on a relatively deflating November that also left Rob Kearney and Luke Fitzgerald badly injured.

“You can’t expect the perfect scenario, Rob Kearney is still out from the autumn series. But the players have come back in pretty good spirits – that last game (v England) lifted them somewhat. But at the same time they had a reality check against Munster last week.”

That said, if Leinster had to endure one game and one defeat in readiness of this match, then Munster at Thomond Park was probably ideal, though, as Schmidt noted, the proof of that theory will be known come Saturday evening.

“There is that cliché that you get a reaction. We have trained hard this week, we have realised that nothing is going to come easy and we can’t expect to win it with a couple of good plays that get us over the line. We’re going to have to fight tooth and nail to get over the line.”

Schmidt maintained Leinster’s attitude has been to treat the Magners League and the Heineken Cup as entirely separate competitions, with Leinster in a race against time to rediscover what they do best.

“There’s nothing new from us, because we don’t really have the time to create anything else other than try to get the rhythm, and I think I said last week we weren’t cohesive at times. I thought we dropped a few balls, our timing was slightly off, I think we did lack the attitude and we did have some frustration with decisions that were made. But on the other hand we didn’t quite have our timing and our accuracy there either.”

His anxiousness is understandable and clear. Nor was he taking much comfort in the two-game suspension for Leicester’s Argentinian loosehead Marcos Ayerza, as he knows the alternative, Boris Stankovic, from the New Zealand under-age system.

“Whether they put Castrogiovanni across to loosehead or move Stankovic there, when you’re looking at alternatives, they are two very good ones straight off. It might be a good thing, but we had done a good bit of preparation and were all set to play against (Ayerza), so we had to park that, move on and look at Castro on the loose or Stankovic.”

Indeed, he cited the choice of playing either the Italian tight-head or English tighthead (Dan Cole) as one of the examples which proves the English salary cap doesn’t “disadvantage” Leicester unduly.

“They would be the envy of a number of teams, and that would include the French teams who might not have the salary cap.”

Similarly, the hangover which four of Leicester’s likely starting line-up may have from the English defeat at the Aviva three weeks ago is “fairly unrelated”, given “Leicester is a very different team to England. I think that while there were pivotal players involved, the professional player is professional. He’ll park that and play the next one professionally – like they did against Bath. I thought Ben Youngs and Toby Flood had a rhythm against Bath.”

Indeed, Flood scored two tries that day, one of which was set up by man-of-the-match Youngs.

Schmidt confirmed Shane Jennings had come through training and declared him “fully fit for selection”.

Unsurprisingly, Jennings is mustard-keen to play against his former club, but he hasn’t played since initially injuring his knee at home to Aironi fully eight weeks ago.

Furthermore, there’s a case for starting Kevin McLaughlin in an unchanged pack, in part to counter the lineout presence of Tom Court.

With Fitzgerald likely to be retained ahead of Fergus McFadden, that would again leave scrumhalf as a burning issue.

Schmidt has tended to prefer Isaac Boss for his physicality and defence in the big away games (such as Clermont and Racing), while opting for Eoin Reddan to help set the tempo at home in the European matches.

There have been exceptions, such as Reddan away to Saracens and Boss at home to Munster, when Reddan’s impact off the bench in tandem with Jonathan Sexton helped to turn the tide, and Boss was one of Leinster’s most consistently effective performers last week.

Even so, Reddan looks the likelier pick on the evidence so far in an otherwise unchanged team.