Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What narratives are emerging about Leinster's current coaching staff?
Hello and welcome to the Counter-Rock Rugby Podcast brought to you by the Irish Times in partnership with Oak Energy. But not because they're the only Irish province left standing. Leinster are the talk of the town at the minute within Irish rugby circles. Certainly not helped by a number of, let's call it, interesting media appearances by members of staff.
Fiery quotes are good for people like me. They make for good copy.
Chapter 2: Is Jacques Nienaber's system causing tactical issues for Leinster?
But generally speaking, if there's anger in the ranks, be it aimed at the press or aimed elsewhere, there tends to be a sign of a camp that is not exactly ecstatic at where things are. With good reason. after losing quite comfortably in a Champions Cup final.
But away from all the bluster, I decided let's get our good friend analyst Sam Larner in, because he's going to come on and he's going to tell us all the various ideas and theories that you're hearing about Leinster's style of play, about the defence being the issue, about the attack being the issue, about Jack Nienaber being the issue, about Leo Cullen, and confusion about what his role is.
Chapter 3: How has Leinster's defensive strategy changed under Nienaber?
A lot of opinions, but Sam is going to come on and show us what does the actual data tell us about what Leinster are doing tactically and if they are still one of the better teams in the world at constructing a game plan. So, here's Sam. Sam Larner, hello, welcome back. Good to see you again.
As the, well, it's funny, we spoke off air before we started recording, it almost seems like as the world is burning in UCD and hence there's HQ, let's get somebody who's not, you know, on a daily basis looking at these guys and wondering why are they saying this or why are they having another pop?
Chapter 4: What does the data say about Leinster's performance since Nienaber's arrival?
And you made the point, well... The world isn't that bad. I mean, they're in a UFC semifinal. They should be in a final. And they lost in a European Cup final.
Chapter 5: Are Leinster's tactics still innovative in modern rugby?
So I suppose the value of messaging when everybody's always having a pop, it seems like things are horrendous. But a bit of outside perspective is always useful.
Yeah, well, I'm a Welsh fan, you know, Scarlets fan. So the idea of making a final, I would happily make a thousand finals and lose them all rather than what we currently have. So I think there is room for some perspective that I think Leinster, the heights that they believe they can reach are likely very high.
Chapter 6: How does Leinster's possession style impact their game outcomes?
And so anytime they don't quite reach them, it can feel like the world is, as you say, is on fire.
Well, if they lose on Saturday at home to the Stormers, I don't think it'll be quite as disastrous. Well, I don't know, maybe it is. That is actually a game that they shouldn't be losing, probably, whereas Porto was always one that they'd struggle with. So let's see what the narrative is on Monday morning, shall we?
Chapter 7: What challenges does Leinster face against more powerful teams?
Yes. Or Saturday evening. But let's get into the more tactical stuff that they're doing, because there's an argument that's been doing the rounds that...
for a team that decided to change how they operate so drastically, particularly on the defensive side of the ball, to go and get Jacques Nienaber, to go and employ his aggressive breakdown and high speed, line speed blitz defense, to try and get over that hump of beating slightly more powerful, slightly bigger budget French teams, albeit a lot of people get their tiny violin out because Leinster have come to be at the biggest budget in Irish rugby and the URC probably.
There's an argument that based on the way they played in the last year or two, it looks like they haven't given him full control because this isn't what you would expect from a Jack Nienaber coached team.
Chapter 8: What future changes could improve Leinster's tactical approach?
I assume if that argument has been made, that's been made on the more of the attacking side of things and what they're doing on the ball rather than off it. Is that your sense of it?
Yeah, so I think there's a bit of both. It's interesting because when you look at the data, you're trying to look for massive discrepancies between what happened before Niebuhr joined and what has happened after he's joined. So he joined, I guess, slightly annoyingly for the measurement here that we're looking at in December 2023. So you could argue how much could he change at the start of 2024?
So if you look at, say, the two seasons before, if we just kind of discount 2023 to 24, if we look at the two seasons before, they were 12th and 23rd of the teams in the URC kind of over time by Cali. So about 130 in 2021 and 120 in 2022 to 2023.
Those are their per game figures.
Yeah, now they bounced up in the first full year of Mewba. They went up to 134 and this season they've gone up to 141. So 141 is the fourth most we've seen in URC, I guess, history since 2021. So they are the high possession team up there with the likes of Munster and Conor in the last couple of seasons who are kind of bucking the trains in terms of high possession teams.
But I will say we're talking about 10 to 15 to maybe a push 20 more callies in a game. We're not talking an enormous shift from a kind of a Leicester Tigers, let's kick everything, or the Steve Borthwick England, let's kick everything, to a Fiji. We're talking a very slight change in direction in the two seasons post-Niwa to the two seasons pre-Niwa.
Okay, interesting. So the overall trend of carrying and possession base has actually gone up in the last, what, he joined December 23. So what, three and a bit, close to three years. Yeah. How much do you attribute that to just, like you just said, it's not that much of a difference to be drastic? Yeah. And it could be variation. And how much do you attribute that to?
You can't really put that on Nienaber because Leinster are just better than most of the teams they play year in, year out. And generally speaking, better teams will be on the ball more. They'll score more tries. You know, they don't have to go to the knockout, kick, kick chase, transition, just avoid mistakes blueprint because they're beating a lot of teams by 20, 25, 30 points.
So it's really interesting because I think it's useful to look at two extremes in this situation. So, for example, if we look at the 2023 England side, who were probably the most risk averse team we've seen in league play and international play for 10, 15 years, maybe. So they would have been struggling to break 100 in most games.
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