Leinster comfortable with 'fluid' situation at No.10

FLUID SITUATION: Tyler Bleyendaal is perfectly comfortable with swapping Sam Prendergast and Harry Byrne in and out as needs must. Picture: David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile

Only one man can wear the No.10 jersey, whether that be for Leinster or for Ireland, but Tyler Bleyendaal is perfectly comfortable with swapping Sam Prendergast and Harry Byrne in and out as needs must.

Byrne has bagged significant game time since his return from his short-term loan to Bristol Bears last season. Included in that have been starts in some big matches, in both competitions, and that has generated no little debate.

His input to date this campaign has amounted to 433 minutes across nine games. Prendergast’s has added up to 494 minutes in his eight appearances, though he has featured four times for Ireland this term too.

Who better to ask about the pair and their respective candidacies than Bleyendaal, their attack coach with the province and a man who wore the very same jersey for Canterbury, the Crusaders and Munster as a player?

"I like it when it's more fluid. I like that you can drop a guy in and the team can still operate well. And the team needs to be confident to play and not be solely reliant on the one guy. If I was playing, I'd probably just want to play, so I'm not saying that they're happy about it.

"But I feel it's great for the team and you get the different personalities in it. Now, the midfielders need to demand and take control of their elements of the game. How do they make the 10's life easier?

“Not just, 'okay, Harry's playing, sweet, he's going to do this. We'll just listen to him' or 'Sam's playing. Okay, it's this way'. So the whole team has to take more responsibility. It gives a different vibe when you sub another guy in. I enjoy it that way. It's working well for us."

This isn’t just about the Leinster dynamic. Byrne hasn’t played for Ireland since the 2023/24 season. Omitted from last November’s squad, he did impress for Ireland ‘A’ against Spain.

Prendergast and Jack Crowley are no longer in a two-horse race.

The expected return of Joey Carbery to Leinster next season could blur this canvas even more but, with Leinster about to travel to France, the focus lies on the two out-halves currently available to them.

There are similarities to their games, and differences.

Bleyendaal sums it up as Byrne being more physical and Prendergast possessing “more sleight of hand" while both can fling the ball and boast dangerous kicking games. Others would say Byrne offers better defence and place-kicking.

"It's not like [there is] a gulf in performance necessarily," he said.

The 'rivalry' entered new ground last Saturday when Byrne was brought in during the second-half of their Champions Cup win against La Rochelle and Prendergast switched to full-back having repped there only intermittently in training.

Bleyendaal liked what he saw with the two playmakers on the field, although the main talking point came at the very end when Leinster won an injury-time penalty and Byrne took possession of the ball and kicked the match-winning score.

It was the kind of moment that tends to be seized on by pundits and public alike. Not so much a passing of a torch in the bid for Leinster and Ireland primacy as a seizing of it, some would say. Not Bleyendaal.

“Emmett [Farrell] was on the sideline who kind of coaches the kicking. Harry had taken the previous kick anyway, so that transition had already happened. If there was another kick to be had, it was going to be Harry just through that.

“And he struck the previous one pretty nicely to be fair to him. So, they're both chomping at the bit to kick it, I'm sure. I just think Harry was kicking at the time. I was pretty happy he slotted it, to be honest."

Choice is rarely a bad thing when it comes to selections and Leinster will be all the happier to have those two available given the news on the foot problem Ciaran Frawley suffered against Ronan O’Gara’s side last week isn’t expected to be good.

Hugo Keenan and Jamie Osborne are already unavailable so it’s timely that Jimmy O’Brien is back fit and training fully this week ahead of Saturday’s last Champions Cup pool game away to Bayonne where Leinster will look to win and claim a high knockout seeding.

Tadhg Furlong is another good to go after recent ailments, and Jack Boyle was training on Monday, but Andrew Porter looks like being sidelined in the medium term with a calf injury, Paddy McCarthy has a “significant” foot injury and Rabah Slimani is another with issues.

That leaves them light again on props although Garry Ringrose and RG Snyman are two more big options returning to duty for a game against a Top 14 side that will have little other than parish pride to motivate them on Saturday afternoon.