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The better competition sponsored by Guinness - Round 15

Leinster have been very fortunate not to have had anyone binned yet. They've given away a lot of penalties in their 22.

Zebre could win this!
 
24-40 Leinster win in the end. Two tries for Max Deegan who has now scored more tries for Leinster than Bill Johnston has appearances for Munster!

A lot to work on. Hard to argue with 6 tries but for about 55-60 minutes, Zebre were the better team.
 
Not the best performance but at the end of the day a bonus point win away is a bonus point win away. 22 points clear now which is ridiculous.
 
Glad it sounds like Zebre put up some kind of resistance, they have really stagnated after a decent start to the season.
 
Can i ask why Leinster are obsessed with Munster. Be it our signings, our academy, our attendances even our funds.

Is it the return of Lunster???

@snoopy snoopy dog dog I think Bill still has more appearances (10) but agreed Deegan did well and lets hope he does reach potential.

But glad to see ye are all still looking on at us too
 
Can i ask why Leinster are obsessed with Munster. Be it our signings, our academy, our attendances even our funds.

Is it the return of Lunster???

@snoopy snoopy dog dog I think Bill still has more appearances (10) but agreed Deegan did well and lets hope he does reach potential.

But glad to see ye are all still looking on at us too
Munster are more obsessed with Leinster's academy, can't blame them though!
 
Munster are more obsessed with Leinster's academy, can't blame them though!
How? By signing guys. How do you know some don't approach us. And well how come some leave so easy to Munster. If it's because Leinster don't want thwm then what harm. Just alwaysbshocked with how Leinster always even now despite all the success still do be obsessed with us. It's nice though
 
24-40 Leinster win in the end. Two tries for Max Deegan who has now scored more tries for Leinster than Bill Johnston has appearances for Munster!

A lot to work on. Hard to argue with 6 tries but for about 55-60 minutes, Zebre were the better team.
Weird cheap shot on an injury ridden player, but ok

Wouldn't consider Leinster's performance in Zebre particularly concerning considering their relatively weak team and their position on the table. I don't rate that back three they played today highly at all, and I do think now that a guy like Kelleher could thrive in this squad. I was surprised at how much joy Zebre got in the scrum against a pretty good Leinster front row on paper, but again no big deal. Guys like Fardy and JGP show as really important in fixtures like these I feel. O'Brien I felt went well and made some good momentum shifting tackles and carried hard.

Connacht were a bit lucky tonight I felt as well. Looked well the better team for great parts of the game but their mistakes kill me. Their ball presentation alone among a series of other really poor mistakes for a pro team cost them badly. I'd really like to see Dillane shake some bad habits he's developed, he was stripped a couple times and faded in and out of the game. Was very surprised he was MOTM, but he has all the makings of a top notch second row. On a positive Carty is a player transformed this year though everything he kick to gold and he's running well although the centre combo they ran tonight really struggled to make good ground.

I didn't see Munster, but it sounds like a pretty slow start against what was non-opposition. Beyond that keeping a team to nil is nice, but whatever about the Cheetahs clear ability to score some very nice tries, the Kings are a genuine scratch side and their squad needs serious investment if they're to do the South African experiment justice.
 
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Weird cheap shot on an injury ridden player, but ok

Wouldn't consider Leinster's performance in Zebre particularly concerning considering their relatively weak team and their position on the table. I don't rate that back three they played today highly at all, and I do think now that a guy like Kelleher could thrive in this squad. I was surprised at how much joy Zebre got in the scrum against a pretty good Leinster front row on paper, but again no big deal. Guys like Fardy and JGP show as really important in fixtures like these I feel. O'Brien I felt went well and made some good momentum shifting tackles and carried hard.

Connacht were a bit lucky tonight I felt as well. Looked well the better team for great parts of the game but their mistakes kill me. Their ball presentation alone among a series of other really poor mistakes for a pro team cost them badly. I'd really like to see Dillane shake some bad habits he's developed, he was stripped a couple times and faded in and out of the game. Was very surprised he was MOTM, but he has all the makings of a top notch second row. On a positive Carty is a player transformed this year though everything he kick to gold and he's running well although the centre combo they ran tonight really struggled to make good ground.

I didn't see Munster, but it sounds like a pretty slow start against what was non-opposition. Beyond that keeping a team to nil is nice, but whatever about the Cheetahs clear ability to score some very nice tries, the Kings are a genuine scratch side and their squad needs serious investment if they're to do the South African experiment justice.
Cant agree with you about our back three, even if Kearney is s**** these days. Daly and Byrne have been great over the last few months, both have really improved their defence and they offer a lot in attack. (And Daly has the best hair in the league). Byrne's performances against Toulouse and Bath in the Heineken Cup were genuinely brilliant and Daly had an 80 metre breakaway try taken off him through no fault of his own. Kearney was poor though. I'd rate Byrne much higher than Kelleher even from what I saw of Kelleher when he was at Leinster. Id say he's mostly been signed as a fullback because we've got very little there after Rob Kearney and Larmour. He could do really well there as well but longer term I think Byrne is much more likely to win further Ireland caps than him.

Munster were alright against the Kings, Conway looked sharp as did Haley. The rest of the backline was a bit meh. Good stuff here and there but nothing amazing. Botha wasn't great at all I thought but on the flipside the second row were very impressive. It wasn't an amazing performance at all from Munster but they scored seven tries without really turning up which says an awful lot more about the Kings than it does about Munster. They aren't nearly good enough to justify their presence in the league, the SARU doesn't give the impression of taking the Pro14 experiment seriously which doesn't exactly help. But I suppose it took the Italians the best part of a decade to show any signs of serious improvement so you have to give them time.

Agree completely on Dillane. He has the potential to be very very good but he seems to constantly undermine it. He should never have ended up behind Quinn Roux in the national pecking order. He does seem to be improving though and a lot of locks play their best rugby late in their careers to be fair. At his best though he's very good and he had flashes of that today, as well as cheaply coughing up possession a few times.
 
Huge win for Benetton!
Really huge one! Finally something positive for italian rugby. They got a little lucky with the first try (probably a double movement) but were the better side in the second half, no doubts. The only negative thing is that they almost ended up wasting everything in the final two minutes with a couple of silly mistakes. They should have been in Scarlets'22 looking for a bonus point and somehow they ended up gifting a very dangerous lineout on the 5 meter line.
Obviously Scarlets weren't even close to full strenght but Benetton was also missing 12 players, that's how it is during the 6N. Great result but still a very long way to go, the clash with Edinburgh in couple of weeks will be a huge game.

Great to see Zebre playing good rugby again. Clearly Leinster weren't completelty focused but still, it was great to see Zebre's scrum being so competitive and watch some entrataining rugby instead of a massacre.
 
Weird cheap shot on an injury ridden player, but ok

Wouldn't consider Leinster's performance in Zebre particularly concerning considering their relatively weak team and their position on the table. I don't rate that back three they played today highly at all, and I do think now that a guy like Kelleher could thrive in this squad. I was surprised at how much joy Zebre got in the scrum against a pretty good Leinster front row on paper, but again no big deal. Guys like Fardy and JGP show as really important in fixtures like these I feel. O'Brien I felt went well and made some good momentum shifting tackles and carried hard.

Connacht were a bit lucky tonight I felt as well. Looked well the better team for great parts of the game but their mistakes kill me. Their ball presentation alone among a series of other really poor mistakes for a pro team cost them badly. I'd really like to see Dillane shake some bad habits he's developed, he was stripped a couple times and faded in and out of the game. Was very surprised he was MOTM, but he has all the makings of a top notch second row. On a positive Carty is a player transformed this year though everything he kick to gold and he's running well although the centre combo they ran tonight really struggled to make good ground.

I didn't see Munster, but it sounds like a pretty slow start against what was non-opposition. Beyond that keeping a team to nil is nice, but whatever about the Cheetahs clear ability to score some very nice tries, the Kings are a genuine scratch side and their squad needs serious investment if they're to do the South African experiment justice.
On Munster game we didn't concede a single pen either so discipline was good.
But key was always just to try get a gap at top over this window if possible.
 
Another clean sweep of losses for Welsh regions. Seems all these contract worries are actually starting to affect the players now.
 

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