John O'Sullivan

speaker

1,312 appearances 8 recordings 2 series first heard Mar 2026 last heard 11 Sep

John O'Sullivan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 8 in all, peaking in Apr 2026 with 3.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

The Counter Ruck: The Irish Times Rugby Podcast · Why is James Lowe leaving Leinster? · 12 Jun 2026 podcast

Yeah, that's my understanding of what happened.

I think, just to put it in context, Conor Murray, Peter O'Mahony, there would have been others who would have been part of that pony add-on from the IRFU when they weren't necessarily on central contracts or had come off central contracts.

So yeah, that supplementary boost, if you like, to the salary was important.

So it allowed players to retain a good earning.

And without it then, there's the...

You know, it's up to the province to either come up with the shortfall.

And in the circumstances, then you would look at it and say, well, obviously Leinster didn't feel that that was something that they could do or have the money to do.

So they decided that they couldn't offer him the same terms or anything like the same terms by the looks of it.

Well, I think the person as well here, like you can look at the figures and a balance sheet doesn't always convey the full picture, obviously, with the person as well as personality, his character, what he adds to the environment, the culture, the group, all that sort of stuff.

But even if you look at the bare numbers here in terms of what his contribution on the pitch is,

Like 71 tries in 102 games is a phenomenal strike rate by any standards, given the quality of the games that he plays in.

So it's not like James Lowe stockpiled these playing, you know, scoring five tries against the Dragons at Rodney Parade or five tries against the Dragons in

And I apologise to Annie Welch, listeners to the podcast.

I'm not picking on the Dragons.

I just decided that the Dragons was an example.

But if you look at something like that, his tries are scored against more often than not in Europe and top quality teams that they play against.

So that in itself and the number of tries he scored for Ireland, the contribution he makes, the difference he makes.

You can argue that this season for the first time, he wasn't always the first choice.

That was partially down to him coming back from injury at the time he was coming back from injury for Leinster.

But you can make an argument and Leinster could make an argument that he wasn't.

Showing 301–320 of 1,312 · page 16 of 66