Unfazed Ross bats away cheeky Penney jibe

You can talk about your Brian O’Driscolls or your Paul O’Connells but, in one way at least, Mike Ross is the type of face that best fits the idea of the modern Irish rugby professional.

Cork-born and now Dublin-based, the tighthead “grew up with Munster rugby” but jokes about being an honourable Leinster man and he wound up in the capital after a successful stint across the water with Harlequins.

Such is the modern game.

The volume of traffic in playing personnel between the provinces has increased exponentially this past decade and yet, far from diluting the rivalry, that cross-pollination appears to have added to it. Rare have been the meetings between Leinster and Munster that did not carry the potential for fireworks and Rob Penney lit the fuse on Saturday’s latest get-together with his delightfully cheeky crack about playing ‘the Six Nations champions’.

Ross was one of the 17 Leinster players who buttressed Joe Schmidt’s squad but he faced up to that hot potato with something only just short of a yawn this week as he focused on the meeting with his former brethren.

“Yeah it’s probably a bit tongue in cheek, to be honest, Rob’s comments. Look, guys who missed out will always have a bit of an edge about them because they have something to prove and we are aware of that. Whereas, if you’ve got that jersey you don’t want to give it up. At the same time, it’s a pretty important game. There’s only two points between us and we want to stay at the top and this will go a long way towards ensuring that.”

Yet Ross himself compared this week’s game to the days of yore when the interpros served as de facto national trial games and there will no doubt be an element of that secreted in the minds of many players at Lansdowne Road. Denis Leamy’s remark about fringe Leinster players being selected for the Ireland bench ahead of Munster men with more mileage on the clock will serve as backdrop to like-for-like comparisons such as that of Jack McGrath with David Kilcoyne or James Cronin.

“I think they’re pretty close,” said Ross on that one. “I mean, it’s very fine margins which get you selected at this level. They’ve been pushing each other pretty hard. I’ve been watching them over the past season.

“It was James Cronin’s debut last season and it’s testament to how far he has come that he’s pushing Dave Kilcoyne who only really made a breakthrough in the last couple of seasons.

“So, he’s probably getting a bit annoyed because he’s just got his arse in the chair and some young fella is trying to push him out of it. But that’s the way it is.”