Leinster keeping expectations in check, insists McLaughlin

If it wasn’t Sean O’Brien fielding the plaudits after Leinster’s defeat of the Ospreys in Swansea last Saturday, then it was, more often than not, Jamie Heaslip. Two Lions doing what Lions are expected to do.

It takes three men to fill out a back row, of course, and if Kevin McLaughlin was behind either of his two more illustrious colleagues in terms of net effect, it was only as much as to make little or no difference.

The result was a dominant effort at the breakdown against an Ospreys trio that contained another Lion in Justin Tipuric and Ryan Jones who toured with the 2005 collective and was also a long-time Wales captain.