Plenty of life after Leinster for shellshocked Carbery

There were times during Joey Carbery’s explanation of his decision to leave Leinster when you wondered whether the gifted fly-half had lost his grasp of geography.

Surely the 22-year-old knew that Limerick was only down the road from his Kildare hometown of Athy, yet so obvious was the gut-wrenching impact of the impending exit from his beloved Blues you got the feeling he imagined Munster’s High Performance Centre to be positioned somewhere on Skellig Michael, perched atop the rocky outcrop, accessible only by an occasional ferry from the mainland.

As Carbery contemplated a melancholy and monastic life among the puffins, you could see him striving to stay on message and clinging onto the bigger picture that pulling on the red No10 jersey would lead to vastly increased minutes in his chosen position than the 80 he was afforded in the blue equivalent with just one start at fly-half for Leinster last season.