Seán Cronin: Belief is building at Leinster ahead of Castres visit

Seán Cronin is not a hooker easily dissuaded from his composure. The Leinster team plane tried to land twice in Cardiff at the weekend before it was diverted away from the airport to Bristol, where, third time lucky, it landed safely.

It was one of those approaches where the pilot goes into the descent and then, whoosh, the plane pulls up just as the passengers can see the cracks on the runway. It was a ‘let’s try that again’ moment. Twice.

“Some lads were exaggerating a little bit. It wasn’t that bad,” says the insouciant frontrower.

“It’s never nice when you’re coming into land and you have to take off a hundred feet from the ground. It didn’t disrupt us too much. We just got on with it. And then played the game.”

Arched eyebrow

But he concedes that it wasn’t totally just a shrug of the shoulders and an arched eyebrow as the pilot hoiked the aircraft skywards.

"I nearly pulled Marty Moore out of the chair in front of me," he says. "I was grabbing on to him so hard.

“He [the pilot] came in the second time and he didn’t even try [to land]. We were getting a bit worried when we didn’t hear from him. Then he said we were going to Bristol and there were a few groans. We’d an extra hour-and-a-half of travel but we weren’t stuck in the hotel for that long. With the early kick-off, it worked out okay.”

Drama seems to be the Leinster thing these days. But Castres had some of their own and the annual old chestnut of what French team will turn up in Dublin now hangs in the air.

The French team were beaten 49-13 last week by Stade Francais in an emotional match in Paris where all the players donned ‘Je Suis Charlie’ T-shirts and held a minute’s silence for last week’s victims before the game began. Seven tries later, Castres languish second from the bottom of the Top 14 league table, with 10 defeats after 16 matches.

They are also out of contention for qualification to the knockout stages of the Champions Cup, with only one point from the first four matches.

What that adds up to, and it’s probably something the players could do without, is a heightened off-pitch expectation in the province that the deciding games in the pool will go to the final weekend in round six. Castres are for the taking.

“Earlier this season, we had no idea what team they’d put out,” says Cronin. “But they have a depth to their squad, in the frontrow, backrow or centres. Castres have caused us a lot of problems and, as I said, the start is going to be pivotal.

“The quicker we can get into the game and stamp our authority, we’ll see what happens after that. Whatever team they send over will be physical. We need to get the crowd into the game and see what happens from there.

Most tries

“We know there’s frustration out there, but we’ve actually scored the most tries in the Pro12 this season. Yeah, it’s quite comical at times but again we’re under no illusions that we need to play better.”

Ian Madigan is also the top scorer in the Champions Cup with 58 points. Leinster can look for chinks of light where they exist and the numbers do point to a side that can score.

In recent games they have focused attention on penetrating the opponents 22 and working scores from that territory.

But he concedes the team were sloppy against Cardiff and needlessly coughed up too much ball.

But, like the rest of the players, Cronin believe that better play is not just on the way but has already arrived in small doses.

“We’re not playing to our potential,” he says. “The blueprint is there, the coaches are giving us what we need to do, we just need to execute. And we’re slowly getting there. We’re just not quite there yet.”

He can’t set expectations for fans and a uninterested Castres may arrive in Dublin. More drama then, this time the welcome sort that could settle Leinster for their final pool game away to Wasps on January 24th.