The Big Interview: Shane Jennings hits hard — on and off the field

He brought a hard edge home to Leinster from Welford Road, an attitude that said ‘to hell with entitlement, you earn everything you get’. It served him and the province well, but Shane Jennings believes Irish rugby needs another shake up now. “I don’t think what we’ve done in the past will get us over the line,” he reckons.

“There’s something I need to get off my chest. We have to make decisions as players if we’re going to follow through on our commitments. I was there when Jenno said he was sick of going to the Sportsgrounds and how it was always [Connacht’s] World Cup final and how they beat us up, but how this time would be different, this time we’d get stuck in. It never happened... In the past, if Jenno or Leo said something around here, it was law. Does it now go in one ear and out the other? Are we getting a little too comfortable with each other? Just because there are three gold stars on the Leinster jersey?’

— Johnny Sexton, Becoming A Lion (2013)