50 / 66
46
ULSTER
RUGBY
www.
ulste
r rugby.comROD NAWN
LEINSTER
PREVIEW
by ROD
NAWN
WHEN was an Ulster game against Leinster anything other
than important, anything less than vital to each side?
In the amateur era, when the Inter-
Provincials constituted the greater part of
the competitive season the pre-Christmas
clash very regularly decided the title.
Now, whether it is in Europe, or like this
evening in the PRO12, the teams collide at a
key moment in their respective campaigns,
for skippers Rory Best and Jamie Heaslip
the league is the only remaining path to
lifting silverware.
On paper Ulster at home, third in the table
and scoring freely, unusually start as
favourites, a tag the players would probably
not want, and coach Neil Doak would
dismiss.
Leinster’s PRO12 form of late has been,
at best, indifferent, on the club’s last
outing a defeat to the Dragons in Newport
consigning Matt O’Connor’s star-studded
squad to a relatively distant fifth spot in the
table, with just three games to complete the
regular season before those critical top four
play-offs next month.
For a side which has won the title in
the last two seasons, and which has a
European Cup record which drove it to the
No.1 ranking in the northern hemisphere,
travelling to Belfast in late April needing
a win and hoping others currently in the
qualifying places slip up is not quite the
‘norm’.
But cast your minds back just five days
and there’s a hint to what this Leinster side
is capable of when, as O’Connor puts it,
it ‘can put the best lads on the park’. The
dramatic extra-time defeat to Toulon in
Marseilles demonstrated so much about
the Blues’ character and commitment when
the odds seemed stacked in favour of the
champions of Europe.
Doak had predicted that the French could
not take the opposition for granted, and
in a compelling – if less-than-thrilling – 80
minutes Leinster matched Toulon in almost
every area, negating the danger that lurks
in almost every position in that array of
superstars and giving as good as they got
in what captain Heaslip described as a
’slugfest’.
The real Leinster was on show on the
Mediterranean coast, the one which many
pundits thought had gone missing this
season, which had drastically under-
performed under O’Connor. Like all
professional sports clubs the jury will remain
out until the end of the season and an audit
of the trophies won is conducted, but there
was telling evidence that Ulster’s opponents
at Kingspan Stadium this evening have
rediscovered their hunger.
Ulster will not have been surprised at the
events at the Stade Velodrome, and as
Doak and his coaching team have insisted,
since the important bonus point wins over
Cardiff and in Connacht this month, that
Leinster will offer perhaps the sternest
PRO12 test of the season to date.
In the last six meetings Ulster has won just
once, but all the games – bar the 2012
Heineken European Cup Final loss for
Brian McLaughlin’s fine, emerging team
at Twickenham in 2012 – have been very
close, even contests.
“You look at the number of internationals in
the squad, and how heavily Ireland turns to
Leinster, and you have to understand that
you’re taking on one of the ‘big beasts’ of
modern rugby”, says Doak.
“Yes, our form has been encouraging; we
have our focus firmly on this game, not
on anyone else. Of course the Top Four is
the target, and a home play-off semi-final
ideally, but a lot can happen over three
games, and Leinster may seem well adrift at
the moment but that can so easily change.”
The home crowd will hope that the league’s
top scorer Craig Gilroy can maintain his
prolific run of form, that the returning Tommy
Bowe can dismember the Leinster defence
as thrillingly as he did Connacht’s in Galway
two weeks ago.
Rory Best demonstrated in that game just
why he is Ireland’s top hooker and just