Recovering O’Brien back in training

Leinster started the season with 14 players who could conceivably feature in their back row and yet they badly need three of their most prominent practitioners to return to fitness in time for Sunday’s European quarter-final against Saracens.

Jamie Heaslip has retired and Josh van der Flier is a long-term absentee. Scott Fardy and Mick Kearney are employed as locks who can moonlight as flankers and another five of that 14 are greenhorns — four of them from the academy — with just 37 caps between them.

So, the province needs some good news in that department this week. They need Sean O’Brien to be passed fit after a miserable run spent rehabbing hip and shoulders injuries that has limited him to just 27 minutes since mid-December.