Cheika out for Connacht revenge

THE disappointment of defeat at the Galway Sportsground earlier in the season was enough in itself for Leinster’s head coach Michael Cheika to vow the return fixture at the RDS on Friday would be a revenge mission.

Accordingly, despite the loss of squad captain Leo Cullen, Girvan Dempsey and Bernard Jackman through injury, Cheika is taking no chances with selection and will choose from a relatively full deck — amongst it Gordon D’Arcy, who made a splendid return from long-term injury at Ravenhill last weekend.

It is as much a tribute to Connacht emerging this season with a resilient reputation as much as an increasing base support level for Leinster that Friday’s game could well be a sell-out.

To date, 14,000 tickets have been sold as Leinster seek to exact that revenge against a team that sent further shock waves through the Magners League by beating leaders Munster on Sunday.

Neither Leinster nor Munster can hide behind excuses after their respective results in Galway when Michael Bradley’s group of underdogs produced the right type of rugby to get the right results.

Clearly, Cheika is taking no chances. The Aussie coach is still reeling from the away Heineken Cup loss to Castres, despite the positive result gained over Ulster in Belfast last week.

He is well aware that Connacht will come to town in confident mood after taking another Irish scalp in Munster; that confidence unaffected by the fact that Leinster welcome back D’Arcy and Malcolm O’Kelly.

Cheika has added the names of Irish international captain Brian O’Driscoll as well as Shane Horgan and Shane Jennings and also hopes that CJ van der Linde and Stan Wright will be fit for selection.

The heat was off Leinster somewhat following their victory over Ulster at the weekend, Cheika describing it as “a good win in a venue where it’s difficult to win”.

“They have a very partisan crowd to urge them on and they were pretty confident after a good recent run. We felt under a fair bit of pressure coming off the back of our last defeat (against Castres), and it was a really good response although we weren’t as fluent in attack as I had hoped.

“But we were working on a few things; it was Gordon’s first game back in several months, Isa’s (Nacewa) first game back in quite a while at 10 and it took us a bit of time to settle into it. From a work rate, energy and physicality point of view, it was fine.”

Cheika was pleased with both returnees, particularly D’Arcy, who hadn’t planned on playing the full game.

An injury to Dempsey meant D’Arcy got to feature for the 80 minutes and Cheika reckoned it could be help the Irish international’s recovery. The coach remarked: “If anything, he had a bigger influence on the game in the latter stages than he did in the early part.

“He definitely tested out the solidity of his arm during the week; he tried to knock Stan (Wright) around a little without much success but he didn’t break it again and that was a positive!”

Cheika can’t be blamed for adapting the “once bitten, twice shy” attitude when it comes to sizing up the possibility of winning Friday’s game.

“We still have the game down there well and truly fixed in our minds and we’re going to have to focus very well on the process and physicality that we bring to the game to make sure we get the result we want, because they are going to be on a high.’’

Cheika stressed that Leinster had never treated Connacht lightly in his time as coach. “They ran us close on numerous occasions and last season we barely got out of Galway with a result after they threw everything at us in the closing stages. In my time, any time we got a result against Connacht it was hard-earned,” he said.

Leinster hooker John Fogarty has first-hand knowledge of the Connacht mindset, having spent four seasons with the western province.

“Any Irish derby is a huge game for all concerned but for Connacht guys they are really special; in the last match, they took advantage of any physical confrontation, they were hungry at the break down and brought a huge amount of energy to the game.

“They are going to bring that same type of energy to the game this weekend and they will push it to the limit; we’ve got to be at our best because it’s certainly going to be a very tough game from a physical point of view. They will go for it from the start right to the end,” he said.

LEINSTER (from): Forwards: B. Blaney, J. Fogarty, R. McCormack, C. Healy, CJ van der Linde, S. Wright, T. Hogan, D. Toner, C. Jowitt, M. O’Kelly, R. Elsom, S. Jennings, S. O’Brien, J. Heaslip, S. Keogh.

Backs: C. Keane, S. Keogh, C. Whitaker (captain), F. Contepomi, I. Nacewa, J. Sexton, G. D’Arcy, B. O’Driscoll, L. Fitzgerald, S. Horgan, R. Kearney.