Leinster underdone but familiarity with French tests in their favour

Jamison Gibson-Park during a Leinster training. Pic: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile

Most of Leinster’s top Test players hadn’t long returned to pre-season training when Clermont Auvergne took their first step in the annual marathon that is the Top 14. Lyon was their starting block, and that was back at the start of September.

Nine of Leinster’s Ireland regulars only made their first appearances of the campaign against Cardiff at home last weekend, a month later. Of their elite players, Ryan Baird and Tommy O’Brien have most minutes under their belts with 160. Andrew Porter is next with 143.

That’s very little rugby to have in the bank, and it highlights just how lightly-raced the Irish provinces currently are as they face into the opening acts of a Champions Cup campaign that is starting two months earlier than in recent years.

It’s no wonder Jacques Nienaber has used the word underdone.

“I don't think we will be rugby-read yet," said Leinster’s senior coach ahead of this Saturday’s game against Les Jaunards at the Stade Marcel Michelin. “We're trying to get as rugby-ready as we possibly can, but it will take some time.” 

Nienaber likes his stats, and he offered a few to buttress this case. The majority of fit players with French clubs, he said, are averaging somewhere between 300 and 400 minutes of rugby so far. Leinster’s, by comparison, was in and around 80.

It’s not quite that stark.

Leinster have actually used 38 players in their three games to date, just two players less than Clermont through six rounds of the Top 14. Of them, scrum-half Fintan Gunne has seen more action than any of the others but even he has just 179 minutes logged.

Claremont have no less than 18 players who have played more rugby than that. Four have crested the 400-mark, another four sit north of 300, and eight again have 200-plus minutes of exposure to competitive rugby so far.

Alivereti Raka, the Fijian-born French winger, was able to miss the first three rounds of the domestic league and still put together more time on the field than Gunne. 

And by some distance. There is no doubt which side could field the more battle-hardened unit. Could.

To be fair, nobody in Leinster is grumbling about this.

“No,” said Nienaber. “It's important to note that every country, every union, does a form of that. Let's call it player welfare. The French will have their plan. Their plan is different to Ireland's plan, it is different to South Africa's plan, it's different to the Welsh plan.

“So everybody's got one, and it's not to say that it's wrong or right.

“It happens everywhere, so it is what it is. Do I feel it puts us behind them? Listen, the fact is they have just played more rugby than we have, competitive rugby, and that's the cards we've been dealt with. They will probably have to compromise somewhere in the season.” 

The question is whether Clermont choose to compromise in the here and now.

Defeat at home to Bordeaux-Begles at home last week leaves them with just two wins from their first half-dozen league games, and it is years since they were the force that threatened to conquer Europe but never quite did.

Their last real flex was seven seasons ago when they won five of six pool games but went out in the last eight. 

They made the quarter-finals again a year later but that was the Covid competition when one win and one loss booked passage to the knockouts.

Christophe Urios’ side lost all four pool games last year.

Their team announcement will tell us plenty about the importance they place on a competition which is a distant second place in terms of importance to the Top 14, and against a Leinster side that has an imperious record in the pool stages.

If Harry Plummer and Baptiste Jauneau aren’t the starting half-backs, and if the likes of Giorgi Akhaladze, Thibaud Lanen and Killian Tixeront are absent from the pack then Leinster’s game time disadvantage will dip and their job will be much more straightforward.

Leo Cullen can be counted on to pick a side close to his best and while they travel to the continent light on match fitness then they bring with them a reassuring recent history of experiences in games of this nature.

Leinster have won their last six pool games on French soil. Lyon, Montpellier, Racing 92, La Rochelle (twice) and Bayonne have all been bettered. Their last pool loss in the country was a one-point shortfall in Toulouse in 2018.

They beat La Rochelle in fair weather and in foul, Racing fell to them despite a nightmare 14-hour journey to Le Havre. They have won big in France and they have squeaked home when needed. So James Ryan isn’t sweating so much about any rustiness.

“There's probably another level on us to be fair,” said the second row after his seasonal debut in that URC win at home to Cardiff last Saturday night, “but we've got to get up to speed pretty quickly.”