It’s all about winning, says Matt O’Connor

It’s just a month since Matt O’Connor turned the tables at a Leinster press-conference by redirecting questions about his team’s form at the media.

“What is form?” he asked. Was it performances or results? All such talk is academic now. Leinster face Wasps at Coventry’s Ricoh Arena at lunchtime tomorrow and scorelines, pretty passing patterns, momentum and individual displays all fade into irrelevance beside the overarching need to claim a win.

Do that and the province tops Pool 2 and probably bags a home quarter-final. The punishment for losing is less clear than the rewards for victory, but claim a losing bonus point and they should still make the last eight of the Rugby Champions Cup. Lose by more and, well, it doesn’t bear thinking about.

O’Connor set the tone at Leinster’s HQ yesterday. Lines of questioning concerning Leinster’s role as sole Irish flag bearers in Europe were dismissed, so too almost anything that could have attached itself to the main narrative in the form of a subplot.

“There’s no game inside the game,” said O’Connor. “It’s all about winning and making sure we’re in front after 80 minutes. That’s the only thing we focus on, to do whatever it takes to make sure we’re in front on the scoreboard at the end of it. The intensity we delivered last week was important. We certainly went out to put as much pressure on them, to make it as high-tempo as possible, and to keep the ball in play as often as we could.

“There’s a bit of merit in that moving forward because that’s probably one of our strengths. If there are opportunities to do that with momentum, we will try to exert that pressure as well.”

Maybe so, but the Australian clouded the matter at another point when talking up the merits of a more traditionally cup-tie approach involving more kicks to touch and for territory. Pretty. Ugly. Or just pretty ugly.

None of that matters this week.

With the urge to recall either Sean O’Brien or Cian Healy after their lengthy injury layoffs resisted, most eyes will zoom towards the tighthead spot at noon today when the team is announced to see if Marty Moore and Tadhg Furlong continue to keep Mike Ross out. Furlong was not included in Joe Schmidt’s extended 46-man national squad, named yesterday, unlike Ross who was drafted into the Ireland XV last November after five weeks on the sidelines with injury. O’Connor believes he can do so again, if required, tomorrow or otherwise.

“He performed not too badly in autumn off the back of very little rugby. He’s been around long enough to know what it might take. That’s in his favour. The setpiece is going to be very important away from home.

“We’re going to make sure we deliver at our end of the bargain there so we can deliver the pressure, gain entry to the game and hopefully get the scores that can bring us the result.” Experience, he added tantalisingly, will count.

What is unquestioned is that Leinster find themselves at this juncture in the sort of shape they could only dream about a month or so ago when the number of injuries still stretched above the teens and the squad was stretched to the pin of its collar. “The ripple effect of 20 blokes injured, most of them long-term, in relation to the bodies you have in your environment and the ability to train at a high level and put out a team with a game plan capable of playing good teams all changes,” said O’Connor.

“That was the reality of it. Those were the facts. The guys who played in Europe against Wasps and Castres (in rounds one and two) put us in this position.

“We need to repay that and deliver on our end with a performance on Saturday.”