Upfront Jennings shoots from the lip

ONE thing you have to say for Shane Jennings: the guy is great copy.

Most players choose to smother uncomfortable questions in anodyne replies and clichés. Not the Leinster flanker.

Every reply is delivered without a hint of sugar coating. The Munster defeat, he admits, was a “good licking”, the two defeats to the European champions and Connacht “a kick up the arse”.

“Everybody’s hurting,” said the Dubliner. “We’re very disappointed with the last two weekends, the way the games have gone. We haven’t been overly happy with the way we’ve played.”

The party line emanating from the province this week is that the defeats are not indicative of any major design flaw but are rather down to a number of minor details that need to be ironed out.

One of the most obvious weaknesses in the side’s armoury these past few weeks, even in the defeat of the Ospreys, is their predilection to turn over ball ad nauseum. Such fundamentals will need to be airtight in Edinburgh.

“What we set out to do at the start of the season is no different from what we’ve been trying to do in each game but against Munster we didn’t do it and it showed. We got a good licking for it.

“Against Connacht we did it at times but, if you don’t look after the ball, and if you don’t be miserly with possession when you have it, these things are going to happen.”

It was in Murrayfield last December where Leinster’s European ambitions were punctured in a 29-10 defeat and here again Jennings’ innate honesty comes to the fore when pinpointing the reasons for the loss.

Their breakdown, he believes, was “a mess” that day against the Scottish side’s abrasive pack, particularly its backrow. Edinburgh are a team that likes to throw the ball around and the visitors got sucked into that kind of game.

“Maybe you have to get the respect of going around teams and flashing it wide by going through them at the start. That’s what we set out to do but we didn’t implement it as we should have. It will be no different this year. We’ve got to take it to them and go up the guts of them to get that right to go around them and get our backs some ball.”

Against Munster last year, Leinster earned enormous profits by plugging away through their forwards, so it was surprising to see that game plan abandoned for the recent meeting between the two at the RDS.

With CJ van der Linde and Rocky Elsom now in tow, Michael Cheika possesses two new world-class ball carriers in the pack and it will be interesting to see if the side reverts somewhat to basics for the trip to Scotland.

“We showed at times last week (against Connacht) that Rocky and CJ have the ability to carry good ball. It’s tough on them coming straight into different teams with different patterns and set-ups.

“So, they’re getting to grips with it and kinda understanding the patterns we want to play and the way we want to play. I’m excited along with the other people to see how they’re going to get on in Europe.”

EUROPEAN points are not the only carrot on offer this Saturday. With eight defeats in their last nine visits to Edinburgh, Leinster could also bury talk of a hoodoo at the home of Scottish rugby with a win.

Teams approach such matters in one of two ways. They either front up to the facts by accepting their history of trials and tribulations at the venue, or they ignore it completely. No prizes for guessing Jennings’ take on it.

“You have to deal with it. You have to front up to the fact that our record hasn’t been good there but I don’t think they’re a bogey team. They came over to Dublin and we beat them by whatever, 30 or 40-odd points there at the start of the season.

“We also realise that they are a very different team in Europe. We realise that they are a proud bunch of players at home and, like I keep saying, we really have to target that area of the breakdown and we have to look after the ball.”