Leinster bring back big guns
Gordon D’Arcy, Emmett Byrne and Reggie Corrigan are added to the squad that defeated Border Reivers 35-34 at Netherdale last weekend. Also included are Shane Horgan, Felipe Contepomi, Keith Gleeson, Brian O’Driscoll, Malcolm O’Kelly, Bank of Scotland Leinster Player of the Month for February/March Kieran Lewis and former Llanelli player Guy Easterby.
Despite the mounting hype about the clash with Munster on Sunday week, Leinster coach Michael Cheika is adamant his full focus is on retaining top spot in the Celtic League.
“It’s about isolating the games,” said Cheika. “We have had a plan from the start of the season, and it’s no different now. We’re trying to follow a creed where we can get peak performances every week. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t. It does take practice; you can’t just say that we’re going to play very well every week. That’s far too easy. There is a challenge in the mind, a challenge in the physical stakes and a challenge to evolve and progress our game.
“This week, against Llanelli, is just a new challenge and we have to prepare without thinking what’s beyond.”
Cheika is conscious that the Scarlets, though well down the table, have a number of games in hand and arecapable of making a late challenge for the title.
“I don’t think we can take anything from where they are in the table. This is going to be a hugely difficult match, and we have noted how they performed in the Powergen Cup last weekend,” he said.
Wasps won that Anglo-Welsh clash, but Cheika reckoned it was a game the Scarlets could have won.
“They showed a lot of what they are capable of in the first half; I don’t know, maybe they took the foot off the pedal a bit, or maybe it was because Simon (Easterby) got injured and had to go off. If they had kept going like that, they would have won the game,” he said.
Though the Heineken Cup is taking much of the limelight, Cheika is fulsome in his praise of the Celtic League.
“In itself, it’s a great competition, one that breeds some very good players, and it’s beneficial for the teams preparing for the Heineken Cup.
“If you don’t get the kind of competition we are getting in the Celtic League there’s no way you can peak on other days. We have to try to lift our standards all the time, so that our average standards get higher and higher, so that when we need to extract a little bit more out of ourselves in the bigger games we are able to do it,” he said.
Leinster scrum-half Guy Easterby is relieved on two counts this week - that his brother Simon has recovered from the injury sustained in the Powergen Cup final, and that he won’t be fit to play against him this weekend!
“Once he recovered, I was able to speak with him and suggest that he take a few weeks off so that he can’t help Llanelli challenge us for the Celtic League title,” joked Guy.
But he was concerned when he watched the match at his Dublin home on Sunday.
“Yes, the sight of him on the ground was pretty frightening. They were quite anxious moments,” he said.
: Backs (12): G Easterby, B O’Riordan, F Contepomi, G Dempsey, B O’Driscoll, K Lewis, S Horgan, D Hickie, G D’Arcy, R Kearney, J Hepworth, G Brown.
: W Green, R Corrigan, R McCormack, E Byrne, D Blaney, B Blaney, M O’Kelly, B Williams, C Jowitt, N Ronan, K Gleeson, J Heaslip, E Miller.
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