Ian Madigan

You do not want to go long and in and you're given the back three counter-attacking opportunities and then it's much harder to re-find your shape defensively off a kick return with a running back into you.

Whereas Bordeaux...

kick long and in and they're happy to kind of get connected play the kick tennis but get connected in the middle of the field um and then they'll also go contestable as well and luke is very good at that so you've got two high quality nines that kick the ball really accurately so we're going to have amazing aerial jewels throughout this game yeah you think of the french game where

France very much won that aerial contest and you know that was a tough day for some of the Irish guys you look at the English win that we had we won the aerial contest so that is a huge facet of the game it's very hard to predict it's very hard to predict yeah it's so hard to predict who comes out on top of that

But I've been impressed with how Leinster have improved in that area as the season's gone on.

They've definitely put more of a focus on it.

Look, the obvious one is the kick accuracy.

Then you've got the person going up competing, getting bodies in and around it.

But it's also when you're receiving the kicks,

Leinster are now getting the player who's retreating is now getting up and competing which is actually something that would go against a lot of what I would have been taught in school and through the academy it should always be the oncoming player taking it but the reason for that is

it's become so easy to compete in the air, to just slap it back.

But if you're the player chasing the ball back, you're getting your body in the way and you're preventing the player who's chasing from the kicking team getting up and competing at the ball.

So it's an interesting one, but Leinster were the first team that I saw do that.

Exactly that.

Yeah, exactly.

I think it's going to be very different to the Barrett one from last year where there was a big gap in quality there.

Whoever you go with, it's not necessarily going to be the winning and losing.

They have great options there.

Yeah, it's fair play to Lowell.

I always say for wingers, it usually takes a few games to get up to speed, but he just came out of the traps and has created a real headache for Leo there.