Fitzgerald talks on hold for Leinster

Luke Fitzgerald’s contract negotiations have been put on ice for the week as the player attempts to concentrate on Leinster’s Heineken Cup quarter-final against Cardiff Blues tomorrow evening.

Doubts over the Ireland utility back’s future at the province have grown since details of his stalled talks and reduced terms offered by the IRFU became public knowledge and it will be next week before the matter is revisited.

“It’s an important week for us and it’s certainly something that is uppermost in all our minds and his,” said Leinster coach Joe Schmidt, “but we’ll leave it until next week and sit down and have a chat about that then.”

Schmidt would love nothing more than to end the last sliver of Welsh interest in this season’s Heineken Cup when they face Cardiff tomorrow but the Leinster coach has warned that Irish rugby needs a vibrant game in the principality.

The Blues come to Dublin unsure where they will play next year, with a pair of interim coaches and in the knowledge that a shrinking budget will result in an exodus of key players come the summer.

The extent of their predicament may be unique but it is, unfortunately, all-too symbolic of the issues facing the other professional regions at present and the detrimental knock-on affect for the Irish provinces and RaboDirect Pro12 are all too obvious.

The Irish sides have already begun to exert a vice-like grip on the ‘domestic’ competition, having won three of the last four titles, but Welsh sides topped the pile in four of the league’s first 10 campaigns.

Everyone will suffer if their competitiveness plummets. “We need Welsh rugby to be strong,” said Schmidt.

“One of the great things about our battles with Munster is that both teams are very competitive and combative and there is a real edge to those occasions. We need there to be an edge when we go to Ospreys or Cardiff or Scarlets or Newport.

“It would be a concern if we thought that was be eroded but, at the same time, the Welsh Rugby Union are in such a strong position at the moment that it will filter through and it will be a little bit more like Ireland, where it is a little bit more centralised and they operate along similar terms to New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, South Africa.”

Welsh sides have actually won two of the three knockout Heineken encounters with their Irish counterparts but it would rank as one of the competition’s greatest shocks if Cardiff, in their current state, were to improve that win-loss ratio.

Eoin O’Malley aside, Leinster are at full strength for the fixture while Cardiff are fretting over a casualty list headed by Jamie Roberts who, it has been confirmed this week, will be unavailable to club or country for six months.

Even that news was overshadowed by the fallout from Gavin Henson’s drinking spree in Glasgow last Friday and his subsequent sacking but Schmidt has warned that many a team has thrived on a siege spirit in similar circumstances.

“They can focus on trying to turn the whole of their season around in 80 minutes because that’s what they can effectively do. This is their one big chance to turn their season around.”