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Premiership giants to battle Montpellier for Leinster's Ross Byrne

Ross Byrne during a Leinster Rugby captain's run at Croke Park in Dublin. (Photo By Seb Daly/Sportsfile via Getty Images)

Leicester are weighing up a move for out-of-favour Ireland fly-half Ross Byrne as they continue to make plans for life without two-time Rugby World Cup winner Handre Pollard.

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The 29-year-old Byrne has slipped down the pecking order with Leo Cullen’s runaway United Rugby Championship leaders, this season coming off the bench five times in the six games that he has played since the start of the campaign.

He scored a try in his only start, the win over the Dragons in September, and is now considered the third choice for Leinster, with Ciaran Frawley starting all three of the games that he has played.

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Sam Prendergast, the 21-year-old who is tipped as a future Ireland star, has started twice for the province this season, including last time out against the Lions, while Byrne’s younger brother Harry is also pushing for his place in the squad.

It has left the Dublin-born No10, who has played 175 games for Leinster, to seriously consider his future, which has already brought him to the attention of big-spending Top 14 outfit Montpellier.

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Bernard Laporte is keen to acquire Byrne, who has won 23 Test caps but hasn’t featured for Andy Farrell’s side since the World Cup. As things stand, his prospects for a recall are looking bleak.

Tigers boss Michael Cheika has asked for a list of available players, with Pollard looking likely for a move to Japan unless he accepts a large pay cut to remain at Welford Road next season.

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The Tigers were linked in the French media with Owen Farrell, who also claimed that they were interested in signing Marcus Smith before he agreed to remain at Harlequins after rejecting a huge contract offer from Bristol Bears.

Byrne, who started last season’s Champions Cup final defeat at the hands of Toulouse, is a much more realistic target for them if he decides to leave Ireland and fancies a move a lot closer to home.

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J
JW 51 minutes ago
'Passionate reunion of France and New Zealand shows Fabien Galthie is wrong to rest his stars'

Ok, managed to read the full article..

... New Zealand’s has only 14 and the professional season is all over within four months. In France, club governance is the responsibility of an independent organisation [the Ligue Nationale de Rugby or LNR] which is entirely separate from the host union [the Fédération Française de Rugby or FFR]. Down south New Zealand Rugby runs the provincial and the national game.

That is the National Provincial Championship, a competition of 14 representative union based teams run through the SH international window and only semi professional (paid only during it's running). It is run by NZR and goes for two and a half months.


Super Rugby is a competition involving 12 fully professional teams, of which 5 are of New Zealand eligibility, and another joint administered team of Pacific Island eligibility, with NZR involvement. It was a 18 week competition this year, so involved (randomly chosen I believe) extra return fixtures (2 or 3 home and away derbys), and is run by Super Rugby Pacific's own independent Board (or organisation). The teams may or may not be independently run and owned (note, this does not necessarily mean what you think of as 'privately owned').


LNR was setup by FFR and the French Government to administer the professional game in France. In New Zealand, the Players Association and Super Rugby franchises agreed last month to not setup their own governance structure for professional rugby and re-aligned themselves with New Zealand Rugby. They had been proposing to do something like the English model, I'm not sure how closely that would have been aligned to the French system but it did not sound like it would have French union executive representation on it like the LNR does.

In the shaky isles the professional pyramid tapers to a point with the almighty All Blacks. In France the feeling for country is no more important than the sense of fierce local identity spawned at myriad clubs concentrated in the southwest. Progress is achieved by a nonchalant shrug and the wide sweep of nuanced negotiation, rather than driven from the top by a single intense focus.

Yes, it is pretty much a 'representative' selection system at every level, but these union's are having to fight for their existence against the regime that is NZR, and are currently going through their own battle, just as France has recently as I understand it. A single focus, ala the French game, might not be the best outcome for rugby as a whole.


For pure theatre, it is a wonderful article so far. I prefer 'Ntamack New Zealand 2022' though.

The young Crusader still struggles to solve the puzzle posed by the shorter, more compact tight-heads at this level but he had no problem at all with Colombe.

It was interesting to listen to Manny during an interview on Maul or Nothing, he citied that after a bit of banter with the All Black's he no longer wanted one of their jersey's after the game. One of those talks was an eye to eye chat with Tamaiti Williams, there appear to be nothing between the lock and prop, just a lot of give and take. I thought TW angled in and caused Taylor to pop a few times, and that NZ were lucky to be rewarded.

f you have a forward of 6ft 8ins and 145kg, and he is not at all disturbed by a dysfunctional set-piece, you are in business.

He talked about the clarity of the leadership that helped alleviate any need for anxiety at the predicaments unfolding before him. The same cannot be said for New Zealand when they had 5 minutes left to retrieve a match winning penalty, I don't believe. Did the team in black have much of a plan at any point in the game? I don't really call an autonomous 10 vehicle they had as innovative. I think Razor needs to go back to the dealer and get a new game driver on that one.

Vaa’i is no match for his power on the ground. Even in reverse, Meafou is like a tractor motoring backwards in low gear, trampling all in its path.

Vaa'i actually stops him in his tracks. He gets what could have been a dubious 'tackle' on him?

A high-level offence will often try to identify and exploit big forwards who can be slower to reload, and therefore vulnerable to two quick plays run at them consecutively.

Yes he was just standing on his haunches wasn't he? He mentioned that in the interview, saying that not only did you just get up and back into the line to find the opposition was already set and running at you they also hit harder than anything he'd experienced in the Top 14. He was referring to New Zealands ultra-physical, burst-based Super style of course, which he was more than a bit surprised about. I don't blame him for being caught out.


He still sent the obstruction back to the repair yard though!

What wouldn’t the New Zealand rugby public give to see the likes of Mauvaka and Meafou up front..

Common now Nick, don't go there! Meafou showed his Toulouse shirt and promptly got his citizenship, New Zealand can't have him, surely?!?


As I have said before with these subjects, really enjoy your enthusiasm for their contribution on the field and I'd love to see more of their shapes running out for Vern Cotter and the like styled teams.

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