Leinster braced for their toughest assignment to date

Amid the mayhem, Leinster have serenely breezed through both a truncated and elongated 2019-20 season unbeaten, with 21 wins from 21 games.

This week though, they can be forgiven for experiencing an edge and even a fear factor the like of which they haven’t known in over 15 months.

Suddenly, Friday's Pro14 semi-final against Munster at the Aviva Stadium looms as their first knock-out game since they successfully defended their title by beating Glasgow in Celtic Park in May last year.

Unlike last Saturday week’s much-anticipated resumption when Leinster beat Munster 27-25, the champions do not have the safety net of already topping Conference A.

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"You have to change your mindset, because it's absolutely irrelevant how many games we've won prior to this semi-final," admitted Stuart Lancaster yesterday, vividly recalling the pain of defeat at this juncture in his first Leinster campaign.

“I remember the 2016/17 season we played some great rugby across the board, scored 90-odd tries in the season, but we lost against Scarlets in the Pro14 semi-final and that defeat still sticks in everyone’s throats until this day.”

“It’s irrelevant what you’ve done previously, it’s about flicking that switch and understanding what knockout rugby really means. There is enough experience in the room to know that, but it’s not a bad thing to remind them once or twice.”

Lancaster also saw enough in Munster’s sharpened attack and customary resilience to convince him that this will be Leinster’s toughest game this season.

“Without a doubt, without a doubt it will be,” he emphasised.

“It’s everything for both teams. We want to reach the final, we want to be competing in finals; to lose a semi-final and have a week off with no game at the end of next week doesn’t bear thinking about, particularly in the lead up to a European Cup quarter-final,” he said, in reference to a potential final at the Aviva on Saturday week before hosting Saracens another week on in the Champions Cup quarter-finals.

“We want to get momentum, we want to keep momentum. For Munster themselves, they don’t have the European Cup to worry about. Therefore their season is defined ultimately by this game as well.”

“I was just saying to Leo actually, we were just talking about it in training, it’s such a shame that there isn’t 50,000 in the Aviva watching it because I think it’s going to be one of those games that’s going to be right up there in terms of intensity and what it means to both teams. You can certainly sense it in our camp this week and I hope it translates through on TV but it would have been am amazing semi-final occasion I think,” said Lancaster with genuine regret.

He also conceded Leinster had “a lot” of areas to improve upon from that recent meeting with Munster, noting how Tadhg Beirne’s return against Connacht on Sunday added to the threat Munster posed at the breakdown, as well as the lineout.

“They’re good in the air, they move the ball a bit more, they have [Damian] de Allende, who is a threat at ‘12’ in setting up launch plays. I know they’ve got a short turnaround but in some ways that can sometimes help.”

The Munster wingers, Keith Earls and Andrew Conway, caused Leinster plenty of grief in chasing Conor Murray's accurate box kicks, and Lancaster highlighted the need to apply more pressure on Murray and improve their 'taxi-ing' to protect the receiver.

“You know it’s coming but you still have to do something about it. Yeah, he [Murray] is very, very good at it and they [Earls and Conway] were very, very good in the air.”

Difficult team

“Ultimately it comes down to the technique and winning those aerial battles, and I thought Munster came off better in those areas than us. I also though the penalty count was in their favour so we need to improve our discipline and I thought lineout-wise that was in their favour as well so it’s not just the aerial threat or the lineout threat or the breakdown threat. That’s what makes them such a difficult team to play against and a difficult team to beat.”

Leinster lost the penalty count 14-8 against Munster, and noting the high penalty counts initially in the Super Rugby Aotearoa and in the Premiership, Lancaster highlighted Wayne Barnes’ more balanced approach in the Exeter-Bristol game.

“You could pretty much penalise everyone at every breakdown if you really wanted to,” he added. “We’ve got to make sure we hit that balance in the game. We want to penalise, whether it’s not rolling away, the non-release – that needs to penalised; coming in from the side [leads to] catastrophic injuries. We get that.

“Both teams want to play attacking rugby, so I hope it does settle down. I thought it was better this weekend, in our game [against Ulster] certainly, the penalty count was 11-10 and I thought George [Clancy] did a good job.”

“We want the game to flow, don’t we? Hopefully it will settle down, but it’s a big game for whoever is refereeing this Friday – that’s for sure.”

Although James Ryan, Dan Leavy and Tadhg Furlong are all being assessed, Lancaster sounded relatively upbeat about their involvement – Ryan's especially.

Both Ryan and Leavy also trained fully last week, albeit Leavy has “been out longer than James Ryan – 18 months is a long time” and Leinster have a plentiful supply of backrow options.

As for Furlong, Lancaster said: “We want to finalise it on Wednesday and someone like Tadhg, you want to give someone of that calibre as long as possible really.”