Sam Larner

I think what he's done for South Africa is incredible.

He's got an idea of how the game should be played, which I think is different to most other people.

But I think that for us to spot that, like, you know, we both watch a lot of rugby, but people who maybe don't watch as much rugby, for you to spot the new ideas, you need to see the kind of games that South Africa play against Scotland in the last World Cup, where you are flying out the line.

You've got Finn Russell, one of the best players in the world, who can't do anything against that kind of defence.

I don't think we've really seen that from Leinster, certainly in the big matchups.

You know, I don't think we saw that against Bordeaux, where Bordeaux seemed to kind of be able to do what they wanted and they didn't seem too stifled by what Leinster were doing.

And we've seen that a bit in the league as well.

So I think that you need to say that there's new ideas.

You need those massive moments, those games where it's

clear that you've dominated um and I don't think that Lancaster have had as many examples of that this year and that's showing out in the stats but that you know they're still an exceptional team but I don't think we're seeing those moments of going oh okay this is new this is something that's really exceptional and so maybe that's down to the to the coaches maybe it's down to the

players it's probably I mean it's probably a bit of both I think there's been a lot of transition there and trying to keep things going when you perhaps don't have exactly the players that you want and also you know a few years ago they they would have correctly have said you know we're the best resource team in Europe or we're one of the best resource teams in Europe now you look at them and go well there's a fair few French teams who probably have a better just you know man for man a better squad than they do and so that is a challenge

I think it's hard to know without being in the, you know, in the environment, exactly what's changed there.

I mean, there's kind of nothing that's massively stands out in the data as like, oh, this is something that's massively collapsed away.

I think probably what's happened is there's just being the defense that Nebah brought in, which was completely brand new, is no longer brand new.

And so everyone is seeing it or everyone has watched it.

games where it's being involved where it's happened and so fundamentally you've just changed the it's not that new anymore and there's also like there's a little bit so just as an example so one of the things that i would look at is defenders beating per clean break so as an attacking team you want that to be as as low as possible for let's say for the winger where you've put the winger in space and they don't need to beat anyone they just need to you know run 40 meters in a straight line

And so if we look at last year, which was a really good defensive performance, then they had four defenders beaten.

So the opposition had to beat four Leinster defenders before they got a clean break.

This year, it's 3.1, which is the kind of the second least favorable for Leinster in the last six years.

But that can be just variation.