Best of enemies renew great rivalry

Familiarity may well breed contempt, but when Leinster meet Ospreys at the Liberty Stadium this week it will mark a rare Heineken Cup venture to Wales for a side otherwise well acquainted with the Principality.

In the past eight seasons, Scarlets are the one Welsh team to have faced Leinster in the pool stages, which they did twice. Other than that, the only meeting of note was a quarter-final shellacking of Cardiff Blues at the Aviva Stadium two years ago.

It’s just one strange quirk in a tournament that delights in them and a new chapter will be added to the keen rivalry that exists between Leinster and the Ospreys when the two sides meet for the first time in the continent’s premier cup competition this weekend.

Such a statistic seems, at first, scarcely believable so firmly has their shared narrative been embedded into the psyche on both sides of the Irish Sea yet there’s has, until now, been a relationship built entirely on Celtic League battles.

Chief among them, of course, have been the two Grand finals played at the RDS in recent times, both won by the Welsh region, and the impression is of a side that rarely fails to get under Leinster’s skin.

So, why is that?

“They just like to have a go, throw the ball around, and fair play to them, they are quite good at it,” said Leinster’s utility back and Irish international Fergus McFadden this week. “Sometimes it works for them and sometimes it doesn’t.

“Leinster are the team that they always seem to turn up against and we just have to be very wary of that. I know we are talking about the Ospreys a lot but we just need to get ourselves right.”

A reasonable point, certainly, and yet let’s stick with our theme for a while longer and rewind a month or so to their last meeting at the RDS, which ended with the visitors pilfering a draw.

Here was the essence of what it is to have a bogey team. Leinster started brilliantly and were in full control — twice — with the visitors clambering back to parity both times and leaving Dublin with a share of the points.

“Every team goes through a purple patch in games and I think that was theirs. We didn’t deal with it as well as we would have liked but we know how dangerous the Ospreys are. They have so much experience at this stage. They have five touring Lions in their pack and then a really exciting back line. You have got to be wary the whole game and stay switched on,” added McFadden.

Should Leinster have won?

“Yeah, I think so. We probably didn’t play our best but with the way we started we definitely should have finished the game (off). Letting them back into the fixture wasn’t nice so we will try to right that this week.”

All in all then, not exactly the ideal opponent as the latest Heineken Cup campaign starts off, not with Northampton Saints and Castres the other sharks lingering in the pool.

Add to that Leinster’s so-so start to the new campaign under new boss Matt O’Connor, one which has seen them lose to Munster and Glasgow as well as that spurned victory against this Saturday’s opponents.

“At this point, genuinely, we are just worried about Saturday given what’s happened before (against the Ospreys),” said McFadden. “We have obviously lost two games that we would like to have won but we are improving each week. Losing to Munster was disappointing but we just have to look towards the Ospreys now.”