Caolán Scully

I don't think Andy Farrell is going to take that route.

I think he's going to pick James Lowe and get every last minute out of him.

And I think that's really interesting.

In terms of how

the how it came to be it would appear that you know the rfu so there's there's a couple of layers to rfu contracts first of all there is the typical central contract that we've heard of before that used to be 100 rfu paid that's now down to about 60 give or take for for most players um which is a sizable chunk when you're lenster and you have 11 centrally contracted players that's a that's a lot of player wage to take on especially at the highest level james lowe was never on one of these

he was on what we call a player of national interest contract where the union would pay give or take 30 to 40 percent or so we believe there's never an official list for the player of national interest uh to the best of my knowledge it's usually guys who are either crucial for the provinces guys who are starters but not quite on a central contract um in terms of the ireland level players coming off a central contract so say peter manny before ian henderson

they'd go on to these deals to help the problems lean into it.

So it would appear that when James Lowe went to the table with Leinster, and Leinster have been cutting costs, they've lost Kieran Frawley, Luke McGrath, Ravis Lamani, a lot of guys on quite a good amount of money.

Will Connors, maybe less so there.

He doesn't have the same level of Ireland caps, for instance, but quite a lot of good players that they didn't have an offer from.

And if they did, they were relying on the RFU to top it up, which never came.

There is a couple of theories as to why.

I know Bernard Jackman before mentioned that when Leinster went for Joey Carberry, when the RFU were trying to bring him to Ulster, maybe that would come back to bite them in the long run.

I don't think it's as simple as just one plus one equals two and connecting those two.

But I do think every action has an opposite reaction.

And ultimately, for me, Leinster losing James Lowe goes back about two to three years.

There was a period there where more and more Leinster players were getting these central contracts.

You know, like say Josh Vander Vlier, Hugo Keenan, Andrew Porter.

Granted, that one was needed at the time.

Dan Sheehan.