Leinster eager to sell notion that Glasgow will make for stiffer test

Glasgow had lost eight league games in a row to Leinster, going back to the 2018 final, before they secured a 43-25 win last season.

Leinster face Glasgow Warriors in a Champions Cup quarter-final on Friday night. Pic: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile

An interesting week, this, for Leinster. The instinct must be to keep a lid on any hype after their 62-0 thumping of Harlequins, but there are tickets to be shifted and only a handful of days to do it before Glasgow come to town for a Champions Cup quarter-final.

That’s not the easiest of juggling acts.

The Warriors are reigning URC champions, remember, and they managed that by winning their last two games away in Limerick and in Pretoria. They have already won twice more in South Africa this season having beaten the Sharks and the Stormers back-to-back in October.

Worth noting.

The hosts would absolutely be talking up their opposition regardless of who it might be this week, but Franco Smith has clearly worked some magic in Scotland since taking charge in 2022 so it suits everyone to be talking this challenge up.

The hope is that Leinster could attract in and around 25,000-30,000 punters to Ballsbridge. That would make for a fine crowd coming so soon after they had 55,000 in Croke Park, and this for a game shoehorned into the unloved and awkward Friday night slot.

The Scots had actually lost eight league games in a row to Leinster, going back to the 2018 final, before they secured a 43-25 win over there last season, but Leinster attack coach Tyler Bleyendaal was still quick to talk up the dangers of their next opponents.

"Absolutely, that's probably in their nature. Glasgow as a team in the past have that attitude and we'd expect nothing less in this knockout game. We're going to enjoy playing in front of our home crowd and we're going to need the support.

“That's not going to win it for us necessarily, we're still going to have to perform well and, like I said, it's probably two good attacking teams and two good defensive teams, so it's just going to be a good contest.” 

Leo Cullen’s side scored ten tries against Quins last weekend. If there is a down side to a performance and a game like that then it is the suspicion that such strolls are of little value when a side fronts up against an opponent made of sterner stuff.

Bleyendaal wasn’t much interested in that old debate. More important to him is the manner in which Leinster kept the foot to the floor long after the result was in the bag. It spoke volumes for their determination to go the full distance in this competition this time.

If Harlequins melted away like chocolate in the summer sun as the afternoon went on then they still started well, and some of the early tries Leinster scored, when there was still the false promise of a contest in the offing, were absolutely sumptuous.

Their attack hasn’t been as effervescent in recent seasons, with Jamison Gibson-Park admitting just last week that the team’s identity has changed with the arrival of Jacques Nienaber and the higher premium placed on the art and the science of that rush defence.

Last weekend was suggestive of an attacking game that is again finding its feet - caveats over the opposition notwithstanding - and it surely isn’t any coincidence that this came on the back of a two-week spell where the club had all their returning Ireland internationals available and hothoused at home in Dublin.

“They work them hard in Irish camp as well,” said Bleyendaal. “I’ve been trying to play them at a high level, high intensity training. They come back to us, there’s realignment to the way we do things. We’re just trying to grow our game. It was just a good performance.

“We took a lot of opportunities and then we got a roll on, that was probably a key thing, though you are never quite fully satisfied. But there has been a lot of nice things we have being trying to get done and it’s whether or not those same opportunities will be there this weekend or do we need to get other things right.” 

Rónan Kelleher is back available for this one having recovered from his neck injury. He hasn’t played since Ireland’s win over Scotland in early February. James Ryan, though, will sit out a second week in a row having injured a calf in training.