RUGBY DAILY: Leinster and Ulster name their teams for some big Euro action | Munster cancel Randle appointment
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Welcome to Friday's Rugby Daily, I'm Daniel Pitcher. Coming up, a huge weekend for Leinster and Ulster in the Champions and Challenge Cups. We look ahead with Gerry Thornley, Gary Ringrose and Ian Henderson and Munster's U-turn on Roger Randall. But first, a big weekend for Irish provinces in Europe. The countdown is on for Leinster as they're getting set to welcome Toulon to Aviva Stadium in the semi-finals of the Champions Cup. Leo Cullenside are hoping to book their place in the final in Bilbao, the scene of their last final success back in 2018. Chasing a fifth star, they've suffered losses in two semi-finals and four finals since then. However, a lot has been spoken of their last four defeat to Northampton Saints last year.
After a slow start to this season, they've gone unbeaten in the competition. However, the manner in which they've gone about it has been up for much discussion, particularly with their defence. A 49-31 win over Edinburgh, a particular highlight of that, though they were much better against Sale in the quarter-finals, winning 43-13. Irish Times rugby correspondent Gerry Thornley believes that it's been a lasting hangover from that defeat to Northampton 12 months ago.
I don't think Leinster have fully recovered from the seismic effect of losing at home to Northampton. That was altogether less excusable than losing, there's no disgrace in losing a final. Least of all after extra time to a Toulouse side with the... arguably the greatest player of all time, and regarded by many as the greatest club side of all time. And Leinster came within a whisker of winning a game that they would not have been flattered to win. They played that well that day. And, you know, they've gone close twice against La Rochelle. They've been unlucky a little bit, more than a little bit. I thought they got very few decisions from Matthew Carling in the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium that day. But losing at home to Northampton was a completely...
What are the highlights of the upcoming Leinster and Ulster matches?
it was partly self-inflicted because they were just so loose and seemingly either overworked in training or mentally not aroused enough for what was coming at them and certainly not prepared for Northampton's threat of counter-attack and in transition and Like we've talked many times, to concede the 39 points in the five drives they conceded and to have a tackling success rate of lower than 80% was just extraordinary defensive performance from Leinster. So out of keeping with them for much of the last couple of years under Jacques Nienaber. And it's now got... I don't see them losing two home semi-finals in a row because of what happened last season. But I don't think they've scaled the heights of over a year ago since that semi-final.
Well, less than ideally, Leinster's preparations came up against an unexpected defeat to Benetton in the URC last weekend. However, Gary Ringrose says the players in the squad are well used to having to pick themselves up for such a big game.
Yeah, we'd be challenging ourselves pretty hard in training and I guess you want to prepare the team as best you can that's playing on any given weekend and then be ready to be called upon. if injuries or something was to come up during the week. So we'd all be expected to be able to deliver from that perspective. It's obviously tough to see the results because, as I was talking about, the effort that goes in in a year, if you break it down to the effort that goes in from the whole group each week, players and staff as well, you want to get a result at the end of the week. Unfortunately, we don't necessarily have control of the outcome of the games and sometimes games don't quite go our way or the opposition play exceptionally well.
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