TAKING A PELL OF A CHANCE
Cullen leaves Ireland stars out of heavyweight clash
Montpellier v Leinster POOL 1 - KO 5.30pm
LEINSTER are rolling the dice by keeping a stellar group of players in reserve in Montpellier this evening despite Leo Cullen’s admission that negotiating a path to the Champions Cup quarter- finals is trickier than ever.
With six games to be played instead of eight in the condensed four- club pool format for this season, errors must be kept to a minimum.
“We’ve experienced that in the past where, if you lose your first game, it becomes a real challenge to tr y and get out of your pool,” said Cullen.
“The fact that there’s only four pool games, that becomes even more of a challenge this year.
“We’ve witnessed so many great days, we’ve been lucky enough to have plenty of good days, but we’ve also had some very grim ones as well along the way.
“But it means a huge amount to test yourself against the best teams and individual players across Europe.”
But Ireland’ s most recent captains Johnny Sex ton and James Ryan are on the Leinster ben chat the GGL Stadium after suffering a dead leg and a head injury in Ireland’s win against Scotland seven days ago.
Also benched are props Cian Healy and Andrew Porter, who featured heavily during Ireland’s autumn Test window.
Ronan Kelleher and Jamison Gibson- Park also played international rugby in recent weeks while Dan Leavy, who has made an impressive return to the PRO14 scene after 20 months out with a knee injury, is primed for his European return.
Between them, the seven have 677 Leinster appearances banked, while Garry Ringrose and James Lowe are not yet ready to return.
Of the 11 Leinster players who were in the matchday squad last week, five – Robbie Henshaw, Hugo Keenan, Caelan Doris, Ross Byrne and Josh van der Flier – start this one.
“Montpellier are one of the most heavily-financed teams across Europe, so it’s going to be a huge challenge,” said Cullen.
“They’ve quality right throughout, even to the point where in the Ireland- France game in Paris, the last Six Nations game, Montpellier had f ive guys starting for France.
“They’ ve a lot of experience in their playing group. They’ve a new coaching group with Xavier Garbajosa who’s come in with Philippe Saint- André as director of rugby.
“We need to make sure we mainly focus on ourselves, because we’ve been apart for the last six or seven weeks. So, making sure we tr y to build up that level of cohesion to get a positive performance,
(which is) the most important bit.”
Montpellier are certainly up for this one. Second row Paul William se said:
“We’re going to take it basically like a
final. We’ll be ready.”
Saint-André added: “We’ll go into this competition with a huge appetite and I’ d like to say with very little pressure, because we are not the favourites in this high- quality pool.”
LEINSTER: O’brien, Keenan, Henshaw, Frawley, Kearney, Byrne, Mcgrath; Dooley, Tracy, Bent, Toner, Fardy, Ruddock ( capt), van der Flier, Doris.
REPLACEMENTS: Kelleher, Healy, Porter, Ryan, Baird, Gibson- Park, Sexton, Leavy.