Gordon D’Arcy

speaker

1,870 appearances 12 recordings 2 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 30 Jun

Gordon D’Arcy’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 12 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 6.

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The Counter Ruck: The Irish Times Rugby Podcast · Can Leinster break their European hoodoo? · 21 May 2026 podcast

And I think it's given them a real...

focus and a reason where all that effort is going to and why do we kind of have a really positive feeling about that right because we don't have it's one of the things I wrote in the column this week it's very hard to pinpoint what Leinster are really good at other than they're just really hard to beat on that though because again yeah I'll read that bit out actually that you wrote on Wednesday

The reason why there's all these things with Nienan Bar, right?

So Nienan Bar brought in a, and I've said this about him, he brought in a South African philosophy into a Irish team

and they worked on the actual technical piece of that high blitz line it wasn't natural to them like it really wasn't natural to them but yet they all got behind it and they bought into it and you know what and it looked really really good at times another piece of that was they absolutely sacrificed their attacking ambition and their attacking flair for that type of defense now

What I think is very, very different this season is the bit with that defence is the scramble.

And the scramble, you cannot coach.

You cannot train.

It has to come from within.

And I think the desperation that is within all of these players has shone through this season in particular.

So that's why I think there's just something different.

You look at the South Africans, you look at when you see Razzy and when Nienanbar was there and you look at them in the last World Cup and everything.

It's that absolute pure selflessness for the team.

Now, I'm not suggesting for a moment that Leinster weren't that.

I think they had it really good, but I think they were a much more technical team than South Africa.

And they've moved away from that.

And this is the third year now with this type of defensive style.

But if you look at the sheer desperation they have in tackle, in rucks and things like that, the fundamentals, the zero talent moments, the...

Those ones, I think that has gone up a notch this year.

So arguably a poorer team on paper this year, but are delivering, are harder to beat this year.

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