Mike Ross pledges no repeat of Bath scrum collapse

Spare a thought for Mike Ross’ nearest and dearest these days.

It’s three weeks since the 35-year old tighthead was part of a Leinster scrum destroyed by Bath at The Rec. Of the 19 points Leo Cullen’s side conceded that day, all bar three stemmed directly from their woes at the setpiece.

Ross was rested a week later as Tadhg Furlong and Marty Moore featured against Ulster at the RDS and he had already been handed another weekend off even before Storm Desmond put paid to the province’s game against Glasgow at Scotstoun. That’s a long time for a man like Ross to sit on his frustrations. Few deconstruct scrums to the extent he does and he admits he probably hasn’t been at his most amiable since that last disastrous outing.

“My wife will tell you I’m not a great person to be around (after a loss),” he admitted ahead of Sunday’s encounter with Toulon which will either kill off their slim qualification hopes or go down as one of the most heroic provincial victories ever in France.

“I am just sitting there, thinking to myself. As a front row forward, the scrum is what you’re judged on. If that doesn’t function you stare at the ceiling at night thinking about it, replaying it, wondering what you could have done differently. We didn’t shirk away from it. The day after the Bath game all the front row came in and looked through it. It wasn’t the most pleasant feeling but we made a promise it wasn’t going to happen again.”

Leinster are hardly the only side to suffer the collapse of a scrum. Even Bath found themselves in disarray last weekend when their eight coughed up a stream of scrum penalties against Northampton Saints who scraped home with a two-point win. Daunting though Stade Felix Mayol is this week, Leinster have at least been there before.

“It has been even honours, so far: get a penalty, concede a penalty,” said Ross. “We have Nigel Owens this weekend who’s one of the better scrum referees out there. Ultimately, it is down to which gets it right on the day.”

Ross can talk about a scrum like a mechanic does an engine. Technical jargon tends to abound but it is no exact science and he responds to a query about referees chancing their arm at the setpiece by pointing out that there are any number of occurences to take into account. “If the scrum goes down you can point the finger at three or four different things. It could be that one guy has lost his footing or maybe the tighthead is driving down, or the loosehead. It could be something as simple as an early hit.”

A solid setpiece – Leinster’s lineout has wavered at times recently too – will be paramount if Leo Cullen’s side is to stay competitive in Toulon while assistant coach Kurt McQuilkin singled out their line speed in defence as the main reason they took the champions to extra-time last May. This will be the sides’ fourth meeting inside three seasons with a fifth to follow six days later at the Aviva Stadium. Ross has never been in this ‘do or die’ scenario this early in the season in his seven seasons at Leinster and he needs no framing of the task at hand.

“From the last two years we have been pushing them closer. We’ve the opportunities to play them twice this year. They are one of the best teams in the competition, the Wasps result (when they lost in Coventry) notwithstanding. You look at their team-sheet, they have a lot of names there that would have been world XV players at some stage. There is a lot of quality there. We’re under no illusions as to the size of the task we have.”