Josh van der Flier backs academy kids to fill void left by departing Leinster stars

Another battle to keep their Ireland internationals may have been won by Leinster with the news that Sean O’Brien is staying around, but the loss of Ben Te’o to Worcester Warriors announced earlier yesterday is yet more proof that the international war is being lost.

It is a depressing state of affairs that the one-time European market leaders will in the summer lose its best performing foreigner to a club languishing third from bottom in the Aviva Premiership — even allowing for how it furthers his Test ambitions with England.

With apologies to Alan Hansen, Leinster are going to have to look to the kids.

Few youngsters have stepped up to the senior plate with the aplomb of openside flanker Josh van der Flier this season and 21-year old transferred that same sure-footedness to this week’s media briefing when quizzed about that surfeit of outside expertise.

“The quality within the academy, and the quality of players here, we’re more than good enough,” he said. “I don’t think there’s a need for that at all. If anything, there’s too many good players in the provinces and not enough teams for them all to get game time. That’s the way I’d look at it.”

There is, of course, the expectation that he would say that. Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas and young players like van der Flier would hardly argue in favour of expensive imports though surely he wouldn’t sniff at the arrival of a Brad Thorn or Nathan Hines-type player.

“You look at the amount of (Leinster) players that were in the Irish squad during the World Cup, there’s more than enough experience,” he countered. “The veterans of the game, there’s a few of them around who are there to give experience to the younger lads.”

His emergence lends weight to that assessment. The speed of his progress has been astounding. Rewind 12 months and he was rounding up a British & Irish Cup pool with the ‘A’ side against Plymouth Albion, Jersey, Carmarthen Quins and Rotherham Titans.

Van der Flier’s opposite number in the last of those B&I pool games, against Plymouth, was Waterford native and former Munster academy man Eoghan Grace who is now playing with bottom-of-the-table second-tier side Ealing Trailfinders.

This past two weekends, the other number seven has been none other than Steffon Armitage, the undisputed king of the breakdown in the European club game, and van der Flier was predictably complimentary of a man who is master of his own arts.

“I really enjoyed it anyway. How much effect I had I’m not sure, but I really enjoyed it as an opportunity as you wouldn’t get very often to play against a player of that calibre. I did as well as I could.

“I learned a lot from him.”

How could he not? The provinces equip players with as much knowledge as possible in their academy days, such as the need to go lower when tackling the really big guys, but that is only so much use when you see Duane Vermeulen picking up from the base of the scrum and running for you.

Toulon used five back rows over the course of the two pool meetings with Leinster. England outcast Armitage and Vermeulen aside, they called on another South African in Juan Smith, Georgia’s Mamuka Gorgodze and Argentina’s Juan Fernandez-Lobbe.

Prime beef, sourced globally, then, though it was the electric and seemingly omnipotent Armitage whom van der Flier would have eyed most carefully when the games were done and DVDs were cut.

Which begs the obvious question: how does he do it?

“I think it’s his positioning. Watching him back on the video, you see him hovering in behind and he anticipates where the tackle is going to be. A lot of it is experience, although I’m sure he’s worked really hard at it.”

Armitage’s absence from Test rugby looks like lasting as long as he is based in France, but van der Flier cannot be far from such recognition and the expectation is that he will at least make Joe Schmidt’s expanded Six Nations squad in the coming months.

“I’m not really focusing on that at the moment,” he said ahead of the PRO12 meeting with Munster in Limerick this Sunday I’m just trying to play for Leinster. Obviously if an Irish call up came along, I’d be delighted with that, but it’s not my focus at the moment.”