Wounded Lions look to reserves

THE toll of the past two weeks has seen Joe Schmidt take an axe to his Leinster side and make seven changes for the visit of Ulster this evening.

The New Zealander and his team have talked all week about naming the strongest possible team for this clash, which could determine their Magners League future, but after battles with Munster and Leicester he was forced to leave key players out and bring in fresh faces.

Having taken heavy knocks in last weekend’s Heineken Cup quarter-final win over Leicester, Brian O’Driscoll and Gordon D’Arcy are replaced by Eoin O’Malley and Fergus McFadden in the centre, with neither man among the replacements.

Ireland props Cian Healy and Mike Ross are on the bench, with Heinke van der Merwe and Stan Wright starting. Nathan Hines is replaced by Devin Toner in the second row, while Shane Jennings makes a long- awaited return.

Ulster will have breathed a huge sigh of relief when they saw that Sean O’Brien’s name left off the teamsheet and the Carlow man may not even take his place on the bench.

He destroyed tonight’s opponents in Ravenhill in December and when asked about being closed down this time around during Thursday’s press conference, he menacingly replied: “Well, I’ll just have to make room for myself then.”

Ulster, meanwhile, retain most of the team which lost to Northampton in Milton Keynes last weekend, but rising star Craig Gilroy will look to add to his burgeoning reputation on the left wing, while Tim Barker replaces Johann Muller, who is injured.

Schmidt rates Brian McLaughlin’s charges highly and admitted the attritional nature of the Heineken Cup win has affected his side’s preparations.

“We haven’t worked on a lot in training, it’s been pretty limited, especially on Tuesday because we had a lot of guys who weren’t fit to train,” he said.

“So really, we’ve just concentrated on what we know, where we’re going and we have to make sure we’re defensively sound. I thought Ulster scored a tremendous try against Northampton last weekend and they made some nice linebreaks as well.

“We’re going to have to get better if we are going to stay competitive. If Leicester is a benchmark, I don’t think it’s too bad a benchmark, I think it’s a good benchmark.

“The challenges we face – even this Saturday – will be even better than that and if we don’t improve with those fine margins, whether you win or lose could come down to that.”

LEINSTER: I Nacewa; S Horgan, E O’Malley, F McFadden, L Fitzgerald; J Sexton, I Boss; H van der Merwe, R Strauss, S Wright; L Cullen (c), D Toner; K McLaughlin, S Jennings, J Heaslip.

Replacements: J Harris-Wright, C Healy, M Ross, N Hines, S O’Brien/Dominic Ryan, E Reddan, I Madigan, D Kearney.

ULSTER: A D’Arcy; A Trimble, N Spence, P Wallace, C Gilroy; I Humphreys, R Pienaar; T Court, R Best (c), BJ Botha, T Barker, D Tuohy, R Diack, C Henry, P Wannenburg.

Replacements: A Kyriacou, P McAllister, B Young, N McComb, W Faloon, P Marshall, D Cave, C Gaston.