Jonathan Bradley

but if you look at his last five seasons so for his last five seasons he's played 46 times for Leinster and he's played 41 times combined for Ireland and the Lions so he is essentially as much a test player as he is a provincial player so to expect Leinster to be able to put the bill for a player that they will only see for such a portion of the time to me it's

It's a real fault in the system.

If you're going to say that Lancer are going to pay more money

on these contracts from now on to try and redress the balance.

The idea of that is to help budget across the boards.

It's not so that Ireland lose a test starter because Leinster are looking at it saying that's not a good investment for us realistically because he's not going to play that much for us.

He hasn't played that much for us in relation to the amount of tests we've played over the past five years.

And we know that we're going in their World Cup year.

So he's going to play more for Ireland than he will play for Leinster over the duration of the contract.

But the fact that it's come to this, I think, by all accounts, it hasn't been handled very well from a personal point of view in terms of the union's interactions with James Lowe as much as, I suppose, the financial aspect of it.

So that's concerning, obviously.

But I just think it's so strange that

Ireland are going to lose players through injury.

Players are going to lose form going into the World Cup.

And everything over the next 12, 14, 15, 16 months is going to be geared towards this World Cup.

But we're sat in a position where Ireland are losing a player that remains a key player for them because of a contract issue.

It just...

It just seems so unusual to me that this has happened.

And it's the kind of thing that hasn't happened to Irish rugby.

Irish rugby probably hasn't lost a player as key to them since Sexton left.