Leinster ring changes for Benetton as countdown to Champions Cup clash with Toulon begins

BIG WEEK: Leinster Head Coach Leo Cullen during a training session. Pic: ©INPHO/Ben Brady

Leinster’s countdown to next week’s Champions Cup semi-final against Toulon starts now.

That may seem a tad disrespectful to a URC season that is bubbling up nicely, but Leo Cullen has understandably used his chess pieces in a way that will feed into the visit of the Top 14 side to the Aviva Stadium.

The province managed to mine five points out of their trip to Belfast last week despite fielding a second-string side. Now they’ve lurched towards a much more familiar line-up for what should really be a paint-by-numbers tie in northern Italy.

If there was no such thing as a European knockout tie to come, then Leinster would have gone mob-handed to Ulster and given the rest a run in Benetton. In all, 13 changes have been made to the side for this latest outing.

It's a case of make way for the big guns.

All told, Leinster will have a dozen internationals starting out in Parma, Rieko Ioane among them. Caelan Doris resumes the captaincy after a concussion issue. Harry Byrne's presence reasserts his primacy at No.10, although Sam Prendergast does at least make the bench.

Ciaran Frawley’s positioning at 15, in place of the rested Hugo Keenan, caters for that but Prendergast’s man-of-the-match showing against Ulster feeds into it too. Still, it’s hard to see him make the 23 for Toulon.

Cullen has found room for some of the back-ups as well. Brian Deeny and Conor O’Tighernaigh will form an unfamiliar second row and Ed Byrne gets his first start since returning from Leinster on a short-term emergency cover deal.

Andrew Porter still hasn’t made it back from injury while Jack Boyle and Paddy McCarthy are still in the midst of long recoveries. Ryan Baird is another man marked absent. He is expected back sooner rather than later. James Lowe remains on the sidelines.

Benetton’s season is as good as over. Thirteenth in the table, they were well beaten at home by a Munster team enveloped in controversy and struggling for form last time out. Losing a Challenge Cup quarter-final to Exeter at the death prior to that can't have helped.

They have been able to draft Tommaso Menoncello, Ignacio Mendy and Paulo Odogwu back in for this one but, with the top two of Glasgow and Stormers meeting in Cape Town, Leinster will be looking to make ground in the standings here.

Their bench isn’t star-studded but then the absences of Baird, Lowe, Porter in the short-term and others including RG Snyman and Paddy McCarthy in the longer-term account for some of that. So does the resting of Keenan, Garry Ringrose, James Ryan et al.

Senior coach Jacques Nienaber wasn’t overly impressed with aspects of the side’s technical effort in Ulster, while the concession of three second half tries in just ten minutes threatened to undo a lot of their good work on the night.

The flip side was some sumptuous attacking rugby and tries scored, and an utterly dominant physical effort in a hostile environment against a rival that had its tails up pre-kick-off and desperately wanted to get one over on them.

This one should be as straightforward as a game gets.