Jennings: we face huge battle up front

IT may sound strange in a week bookended by games against Munster and Clermont Auvergne, but London Irish have been dominating Shane Jennings’s thoughts of late.

Six months ago Toby Booth’s side provided the opposition in the RDS for Leinster’s first game as reigning European champions and they deflated the party atmosphere by nicking a 12-9 win.

It was a result that was all the more jarring given the Irish province’s 30-0 demolition job on Munster six days earlier and now here they are again facing into Europe on the back of another win over their rivals.

“It isn’t good enough to play well against Munster one week and not have that consistency in our game,” said the former Leicester Tiger who played every minute of the two ties against Tony McGahan’s side and the Heineken opener against the Exiles.

“That’s not the team we want to be or strive to be. When we played against Munster at the start of the year we probably, unknowingly, took our foot off the accelerator a little bit (against London Irish).

“Maybe we didn’t have that bit of edge that we should have had. It was our fault that it happened and we don’t want to do that again.”

Leinster may have ultimately negotiated their way out of that Pool Six cul de sac and into Friday’s quarter-final but Jennings hasn’t forgotten the lessons he learnt that night in early October.

The newsprint describing Leinster’s win in Thomond Park was hardly dry on the page last weekend before the flanker was addressing the rest of the squad and reminding them of that traumatic defeat in October.

“We were off and if you are off only by a couple of per cent you will be shown up. London Irish are a very good, strong team and they were going well at the time. They were pretty similar to Clermont with a good pack and a good set-piece. No disrespect to London Irish, but Clermont are a lot more dangerous given their backs.

“If we play like we did in that London Irish home game we will come up short. We are all pretty realistic about what happened in the week leading up to that London Irish game and what happened last week.

“We know that we have to get good preparation in and do our homework on them because, if we don’t, we will come up short and we will be out of Europe.”

It shouldn’t be all that surprising if Jennings seems more preoccupied with that defeat than most of his colleagues as it was a loss that germinated in the Exiles’ dominance at the breakdown.

Referee Romain Poite was depicted as the villain of the piece in some circles but the fact remains that Declan Danaher, Steffon Armitage and Chris Hala’ufia claimed bragging rights in the battle of the back rows.

The sands have shifted in the meantime.

When Leinster and Clermont Auvergne go ‘tête-à-tête’ in the RDS it will be against a background coloured by the tweaked interpretation of the tackle which insists that a tackler release a ball carrier before competing for the ball.

Michael Cheika and the rest of the Leinster camp have been as consistently positive about the change as Ireland were negative prior to, and after, the Six Nations game against Wales and Jennings is no different this week.

“It is probably less of an issue than people make out. Even in the Six Nations games there were one or two glaring penalties that people were looking for with hands not going away but overall there hasn’t been that many.

“The refs want to see you make that effort. One of the boys made a good point. It isn’t just about taking your hands away because if you do that you will just fall over so it is about keeping your weight on your feet.”

And what, you ask, of Clermont themselves?

“I have no idea. I have never played against them. From watching them, they are an extremely powerful team. Their pack is based on physically imposing themselves. They seem to have the personnel to do it as well and a good set-piece. Their scrum is pretty intimidating and daunting if we don’t get our stuff right.

“They have such strength out the back as well, so many different people who can play whether they are Italian internationals or French internationals. They have some South Sea Islanders in there as well. They have a good squad so we are in for a massive battle up front. That will set the tone.”

As always.