DONAL LENIHAN: Far away hills aren’t always greener
While many would have accepted in advance of their Heineken Cup round six tie in Exeter that their chances of the quarter-finals were extremely tight, reality bites hard when it actually comes to pass. Come next April when the chance to win another trophy presents itself — what would any other club in Europe give to land three Heineken Cups and an Amlin Challenge cup in five seasons — you can be sure that Joe Schmidt would have his charges primed and ready for battle.
That lofty aspiration now feels a little hollow with the news Johnny Sexton — a born leader for the next generation of Leinster hopefuls — will no longer be around to steer the ship. With Leo Cullen likely to call a halt on a great career in May, and Brian O’Driscoll contemplating how long more he can afford to put his body on the line, suddenly Leinster have deficiency in the leadership stakes.
Sexton’s performance in the 2011 Heineken Cup final against Northampton at the Millennium Stadium has gone down in Leinster folklore, and with good reason. He dragged the Blues back into that game, scoring two crucial tries and 28 points in the process, eliminating a 16-point deficit at half-time. That one game alone set him up as an inspirational figure for every aspiring Leinster player.
That future lies elsewhere for Sexton now and all of a sudden, Leinster look exposed and vulnerable, with the clock ticking against O’Driscoll, Cullen, Gordon D’Arcy, Shane Jennings and even Mike Ross.
The issues surrounding the composition of the second row are still there and the arrival of Mike McCarthy next season will not solve the problem alone. Factor in also that Fionn Carr, Tom Sexton and Andrew Conway are all moving on at the end of the season and there are gaping holes to be filled in their squad.
All that now pales into insignificance against the necessity to re-sign Rob Kearney, Cian Healy and Luke Fitzgerald whose contracts are due to expire in June. In another 12 months, Sean O’Brien, Cian and Jamie Heaslip all have contracts up for renewal and Joe Schmidt could well be moving home to New Zealand.
Leinster will have further cause to sweat given that Kearney and Healy will be negotiating directly with the IRFU, just like Sexton, and in that respect Leinster are at the mercy of the human resource department of the governing body in shaping their future. That is one of the disadvantages faced by the provinces here. Consider for a moment if Conor O’Shea at Harlequins or Richard Cockerill at Leicester were powerless to negotiate with their players when their contracts were up for renewal.
Fitzgerald’s case is even more precarious as his recent experience in dealing with the IRFU when he was injured at the end of last season has left a bit of a sour taste. All of a sudden a team that had taken years to put together and finally rid the shackles of underachievement when they accounted for Munster in that epic Heineken Cup semi-final at Croke Park in 2009 and went on to achieve greatness, has been landed in a precarious position.
Munster found to their cost what happens when the heart of a team is ripped out within a short timeframe. At least in their case, they got everything those great players had to offer and only the ravages of time associated with the professional game forced their exit from the Munster dressing room. Leinster now risk losing a collection of homegrown players who have already contributed much to the province but still have so more to offer.
Sexton’s opportunity in France, with the massive financial security his proposed new deal offers, was just too big to ignore. He has given everything to the Leinster cause and with a contract that paid comparatively little to those around him for a number of years, is entitled to reap the dividends now.
He more than anyone will recall that one man’s misery is another’s opportunity. When he was hauled off at half time by Michael Cheika in Leinster’s 18-15 defeat away to Castres in the pool stages of that memorable break through season in 2008/09, Sexton felt his future in Dublin was over and was on the verge of moving on. Fate intervened and Felipe Contepomi’s injury against Munster that day offered him an opportunity he devoured. He has never looked back. Others will now be presented with that chance but Leinster hope that their hands aren’t tied any further by circumstances beyond their immediate control.
The other issue that raised its head on the same day as Sexton’s departure was confirmation that 11 months on from Twickenham, Ireland are still no closer to solving the back-up tight head situation to Mike Ross than they were when Tom Court was unfairly pilloried for doing his best to shore up matters as a replacement for the injured Cork man.
Shorn of the responsibility to cover as an auxiliary tight head, Court has blossomed into an outstanding loose head and is enjoying the season of his life. The man designated to fill the role, former Taranaki tight head Michael Bent, just isn’t at the required level and is being ruthlessly exposed almost every time he is forced into a scrum engagement. The fault here does not lie with the New Zealander. Offered the chance of international rugby and a lucrative contract at several multiples of what he was earning back home, who could blame him? Declan Kidney was left with no choice but to promote Declan Fitzpatrick to the full Irish bench for Saturday after Bent was badly exposed once again in Galway. I am sure Kidney now regrets only giving Fitzpatrick 10 minutes game time last Friday night as he had only enjoyed 103 minutes of action to that point this season due to injury.
The strange irony about Bent being put to the sword by the England Saxons was that the two tight heads that appeared for England were Irish-qualified and available to Ireland in the first instance. Northampton’s Paul Doran-Jones, who now has four full caps for England, played for Ireland at U19 and U20 level including the junior World Cup back in 2004.
The reserve tight head, 22-year-old Kieran Brooks from Leicester Tigers who came on for the final 10 minutes at the Sportsground, also played for Ireland at U18, U19 and U20 level but with no expression of interest from the Ireland set up, declared for England 18 months ago. He has since lined out in a non-cap international against the Barbarians and won a Churchill Cup with the Saxons in 2011. Leicester who signed Brooks from Newcastle, have an excellent track record in bringing through hard scrummaging prop forwards. Having travelled 12,000 miles in an effort to solve the tight head dilemma, perhaps the solution was on our doorstep all the time.
Far away hills and all that...
