Leinster's Van der Flier ready to put shoulder to the wheel

Josh van der Flier may be too honest for his own good.

The expectation was that he would start alongside Jack Conan and Sean O’Brien for the Champions Cup quarter-final against Wasps at the start of the month but, with just 80 minutes banked against Cardiff since his return from shoulder problems, Leo Cullen plumped for Dan Leavy instead. “If I was unbiased I wouldn’t have picked me either,” the UCD flanker admitted.

Truth is he’s not fully up to speed yet despite managing another 19 minutes off the bench against the English side and 80 in the win away to Wasps last weekend. There he is being honest to a fault, again, although he follows it up quickly by declaring his readiness for Connacht on Saturday.

Leinster have often struggled at the Sportsground but the tie offers the opportunity to tick more than one box: A win would cement the visitors’ place at the summit of the Guinness PRO12 table and the likes of van der Flier will use it as an audition for Clermont Auvergne in Lyon a week later.

“Yeah, you have to focus on the team performance but obviously everyone wants to play well,” said the 23-year-old. “I obviously want to play well and everyone wants to be on that team sheet for Clermont, so I suppose that’s in the back of everyone’s mind.

“But we just have to focus on putting in a good team performance. It’s one of those things: You know you shouldn’t be thinking about that game but everyone obviously has it in the back of their mind. It will be a very tough game in Connacht.”

Nothing highlights Leinster’s rediscovered well-being this season like their options in the back row.

Jordi Murphy looked superb in his short time on the pitch for Ireland in Chicago but has hardly been missed since. Jack Conan has stepped up in recent weeks for the absent Jamie Heaslip and Rhys Ruddock has slotted in for a man of the match performance.

Add in Van der Flier, Leavy and Sean O’Brien and the combinations are endless and van der Flier credits that competition and the influx of so much new blood into the group as two of the key drivers in restoring the culture that Jonathan Sexton said had slipped last term.

“The coaches have been really brilliant as well,” he said. Sexton isn’t a coach but he is the closest thing the team has to one on the field and, though he says the shoulder injury which affected him during the Six Nations is fine now, he will be a target for opposing sides from this weekend all the way through to, all going well, the last Lions test in New Zealand.

CJ Stander and Peter O’Mahony both suggested that the Munster back row could have done more to protect Conor Murray from Glasgow’s aggression around the ruck when the sides played in January but Van der Flier doesn’t feel as if Sexton requires that level of care.

Not in the old-school sense anyway.

“Well, there’s not much you can do about it. I suppose that’s what my dad (Dirk) would have said back in his day: if someone did that you’d throw them a box or something, or you’d find them in the next ruck. But no, you’ve just got to leave those things to the ref these days.

“If the opposition want to be reckless and put in dangerous tackles then the ref is going to deal with that. It’s past starting a fight with someone, It’s just kind of stupid and it could cost you the game.”