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How Ben Youngs rates Leinster and the scale of the task awaiting Leicester

Leicester Tigers' Ben Youngs and George Ford before the Gallagher Premiership match at Coventry Building Society Arena, Coventry. Picture date: Sunday January 9, 2022. (Photo by Mike Egerton/PA Images via Getty Images)

Leicester scrum-half Ben Youngs believes Leinster are the best club team in the world as he prepares to face the Irish province in Saturday’s eagerly anticipated Heineken Champions Cup quarter final at Mattioli Woods Welford Road.

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While Youngs could be accused of talking up the threat posed by Leinster, he bases his verdict on a the vastly experienced Irish squad spearheaded by Jonny Sexton and containing key members of the Ireland squad who have beaten England in their last two Six Nations meetings.

Leicester are top of the Gallagher Premiership and secured a home semi-final play-off thanks to a thumping 56-26 win over Bristol with Youngs pulling the tactical strings with halfback partner George Ford and they will have key roles against the Sexton-Jamison Gibson-Park double act for the opposition on Saturday.

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We’re joined by an Englishman in the Pyrenees as Pau fly half Zack Henry talks us through his journey from Rouen in Federale 1 up through PRO D2 and to the Top 14 via a stint at Leicester in the Premiership. We hear how playing under Steve Borthwick at Tigers wasn’t the right fit, what Gabin Villiere was like back in his days as a back-up scrum half in the French third tier, how dangerous Chouffe socials can be and what happens when you injure your hamstring and are sent to a faith healer rather than a physio! Plus, Johnnie makes a big prediction about who will miss out on the Top 14 play-offs, we discuss Spain being stripped of their place at the World Cup in France next year and we pick our MEATER Moment of the Week…
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Youngs said: “When you look at their star studded team, the amount of players who have won before in Europe with international experience and coming on the back of their Autumn and Six Nations performances. Sexton is a key man for them along with Gibson-Park and they are very settled and know each other really well. It is a great challenge for us and we get to see where we are at against the best club team in Europe if not the best in the world.

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“It is everything we want to do and we have come on loads this season but let’s see how far we really have come. We understand it is going to take something special from us as a group of players and then get excited about it. We are home and playing a team that has been formidable for years in Europe and you know you have to have a week to peak to get the victory.

“It is going to have that test match feel about and that kind of build up. It is the kind of week we want to be part of. I was a travelling reserve in the 2009 final when we played Leinster with Sexton’s drop goal and coming up short. Leinster are steeped in history in Europe an their squad as vast experience and we have to recognise it will take a monumental effort.”

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J
JW 6 hours ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

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