Fogarty hails Lowe’s ‘infectious’ attitude as Kiwi impresses again

THESE international periods are when Leinster really get their money’s worth from their overseas signings and this Six Nations window has proved no different.

In last week’s win over the Scarlets, Scott Fardy was once again a stand-out performer in the pack, while man of the match James Lowe continued to dazzle the RDS faithful.

Lowe has been a revelation since arriving in Dublin and the impact that he is having both on and off the pitch has been very positive.

The younger players are feeding off the Kiwi’s positivity, as Lowe has slotted in seamlessly.

MESSAGING

“It’s such a pleasure to have those guys, it really is, and their ‘messaging’ during the week,” scrum coach John Fogarty said.

“The experience that Scott has in that forward group at the moment is huge, and how he can message the guys during the week is really important for us.

“The energy that the other guy (Lowe) brings, you can feel it. He’s infectious as a person, and it’s genuine and it’s real, and it’s so different to the norm over here.

“You get some that are so disciplined, etc, etc, etc, but James is that bit different, and it’s a pleasure to be around him.

“There’s things he can be better at, but he was so positive in attack for us, it was brilliant.

“The other side of it was Ciarán Frawley. In this window I think we’ve 38 players away with Sevens, the Under-20s and the Irish squad, and the injured group.

“With that many people away we get the opportunity to see someone like Ciarán Frawley come on and knock one over, and then be very composed throughout his minutes. It was brilliant to see him get that opportunity.”

Leinster impressed as they beat the champions but as ever, there was plenty for the coaching staff to pick through, before the Southern Kings arrive in the capital today.

“I thought in the second half, towards the end, we got distracted by, or frustrated by the Scarlets,” Fogarty maintained.

“We didn’t close out the game. That is the second week in a row we were in strong positions and we didn’t close out effectively.

“That’s frustrating. Some of that was discussed this morning in the small units in the video review.

“Defensively, we can be better. We can be a little bit shy with line speed, for instance. That takes away from us. We let teams control us a little better then, that the attack is in control of our defence a small bit.

“That happened at stages of the game. With our maul, we had a maul close to the end of the game. They move around the outside, the maul collapses and there is a knock-on.

“From that point, they make a line break and we were defending, under a lot of pressure. There were instances where we have to get better.

“That is disappointing because we had it against Edinburgh and we had it again on Saturday.

“We need to make sure we’re on top of that, as a coaching group, so that we don’t find ourselves in those positions again.”

The Kings have been woeful since their introduction to the PRO14 and the Leinster supporters will be expecting a big win later this evening.

However, Fogarty has warned that the South Africans could be a tough nut to crack.

SAVAGE

“The fan base will expect us to win and, again, they were savage – 16,900 people on that kind of a weekend,” he added.

“There’s a buzz out there that’s building in the fan base. I thought they (the Kings) did a good job against the Ospreys. They were up at half-time. They’ve got real speed in their team, and that’s always a threat.

“Over there actually, they took the ball off us quite a bit. So if you think of the Scarlets game, and the turnovers we had in contact, not the other turnovers, we were very disappointed with that and this week they can take the ball off us. So we’re very aware that they can hurt us.”