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Is it Ireland or Leinster versus Wales in Dublin this afternoon?
By Ian Cameron
It's a remarkable testament to the strength in depth of Leinster - and the ability of the province to produce rugby athletes - that so many of Ireland's squad members for the Wales game can claim a blue tinge to their lineage.
The European heavyweights, who have dominated the PRO14 in recent seasons, have become the dominant variant in Irish rugby. The province supply chain is of course dependent on the highly competitive Leinster Schools system and owes at least a significant portion of its success to the demographic advantage it enjoys over its interprovincial rivals.
Leinster - with Dublin on its eastern coast - has a population of 2.6 million, just 500,000 or so less than the entirety of Wales.
Nevertheless, the numbers are impressive.
The 23 includes 14 current Leinster representatives, 11 of the starting 15.
What's more, of the non-Leinster players selected in the 15 - two of them are products of Leinster's academy. So that's 13 of the Ireland XV that are Leinster players, past or present.
Twelve of the starting XV came through the academy. In fact just seven of the 23 didn't come through the Leinster system - Mack Hansen, Jamieson Gibson-Park, James Hume, Finlay Bealam, Bundee Aki, Peter O’Mahony and Conor Murray.
A similar pattern played out at U20s level, with 11 players from the Irish squad in the 23 that thumped Wales U20s 53-5 at Musgrave Park on Friday night.
IRELAND TEAM TO PLAY WALES:
Leinster Academy players in bold*
H Keenan (Leinster); A Conway (Munster), G Ringrose (Leinster), B Aki (Connacht), M Hansen (Connacht); J Sexton (Leinster, capt), J Gibson-Park (Leinster); A Porter (Leinster), R Kelleher (Leinster), T Furlong (Leinster), T Beirne (Munster), J Ryan (Leinster), C Doris (Leinster), J Van Der Flier (Leinster), J Conan (Leinster).
REPLACEMENTS: D Sheehan (Leinster), C Healy (Leinster), F Bealham (Connacht), R Baird (Leinster), P O’Mahony (Munster), C Murray (Munster), J Carbery (Munster), J Hume (Ulster).
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Latest Comments
Nah, that just needs some more variation. Chip kicks, grubber stabs, all those. Will Jordan showed a pretty good reason why the rush was bad for his link up with BB.
If you have an overlap on a rush defense, they naturally cover out and out and leave a huge gap near the ruck.
It also helps if both teams play the same rules. ARs set the offside line 1m past where the last mans feet were😅
Go to commentsYeah nar, should work for sure. I was just asking why would you do it that way?
It could be achieved by outsourcing all your IP and players to New Zealand, Japan, and America, with a big Super competition between those countries raking it in with all of Australia's best talent to help them at a club level. When there is enough of a following and players coming through internally, and from other international countries (starting out like Australia/without a pro scene), for these high profile clubs to compete without a heavy australian base, then RA could use all the money they'd saved over the decades to turn things around at home and fund 4 super sides of their own that would be good enough to compete.
That sounds like a great model to reset the game in Aus. Take a couple of decades to invest in youth and community networks before trying to become professional again. I just suggest most aussies would be a bit more optimistic they can make it work without the two decades without any pro club rugby bit.
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