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Prop row has added spice to PRO14 semi-final build-up in Dublin

(Photo By Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile via Getty Images)

You can imagine Leinster coach Leo Cullen had better things to do in the lead-up to Friday night’s Guinness PRO14 semi-final against Munster than deal with the issue of bringing in an English Championship tighthead as cover for the busy months ahead. 

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However, that was what he had to do given the schedule his team has with the business end of the 2019/20 league and Champions Cup campaigns being quickly followed by the October start of the new 2020/21 PRO14, a time in the year when his Ireland players will be preparing for their hectic Test schedule.  

It’s odd to think Leinster could ever be short in any sector of their team given the conveyor belt of talent their academy produces year after year. But it has now emerged that Cullen was blindsided regarding the situation with young tightheads backing up the roster behind Tadhg Furlong, Andrew Porter and Michael Bent.    

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RugbyPass brings you Game Day, the behind the scenes documentary on the 2018 Guinness PRO14 final between Leinster and Scarlets in Dublin

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RugbyPass brings you Game Day, the behind the scenes documentary on the 2018 Guinness PRO14 final between Leinster and Scarlets in Dublin

Apparently, he had been given a verbal indication during the lockdown by Roman Salanoa, a youngster who arrived in Ireland a few years ago from Hawaii where he played American football, that he would be staying on at the club.

The information then fed into Leinster agreeing to allow another youngster, Jack Aungier, move to Connacht. However, after that deal for Aungier was signed, it emerged that Salanoa hadn’t put pen to paper on his Leinster contract and was instead joining Munster. That left Cullen this week having to agree on a short-term deal with Ciaran Parker, the Jersey Reds tighthead who had been at Munster until last May.

The issue came up in Cullen’s eve-of-match media conference and he admitted he wasn’t happy that Munster had managed to secure the services of Salanoa from under their nose. Their paths won’t cross on Friday night at the Aviva as Salanoa is injured and still waiting to make his Munster debut, but the manner of the prop’s summer exit has rankled ahead of the PRO14 semi-final.   

“He told me he was staying. I told him I had to deal with another player [Aungier],” Cullen said, explaining his version on how Salanoa exited Leinster for Munster. “That’s how it unfolded. I basically took him at his word but he hadn’t actually signed the contract. I don’t know what sort of pressure he was under in the background (from the IRFU), but he left us compromised.

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“I was upfront with him from day one, so he knew. If players want to go that is completely their own business. I’m not going to tell them what is best for their careers, they can decide that for themselves.”

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J
JW 4 hours ago
‘The problem with this year’s Champions Cup? Too many English clubs’

Like I've said before about your idea (actually it might have been something to do with mine, I can't remember), I like that teams will a small sustainable league focus can gain the reward of more consistent CC involvement. I'd really like the most consistent option available.


Thing is, I think rugby can do better than footballs version. I think for instance I wanted everyone in it to think they can win it, where you're talking about trying to make so the worst teams in it are not giving up when they are so far off the pace that we get really bad scorelines (when that and giving up to concentrate on the league is happening together). I know it's not realistic to think those same exact teams are going to be competitive with a different model but I am inclined to think more competitive teams make it in with another modem. It's a catch 22 of course, you want teams to fight to be there next year, but they don't want to be there next year when theres less interest in it because the results are less interesting than league ones. If you ensure the best 20 possible make it somehow (say currently) each year they quickly change focus when things aren't going well enough and again interest dies. Will you're approach gradually work overtime? With the approach of the French league were a top 6 mega rich Premier League type club system might develop, maybe it will? But what of a model like Englands were its fairly competitive top 8 but orders or performances can jump around quite easily one year to the next? If the England sides are strong comparatively to the rest do they still remain in EPCR despite not consistently dominating in their own league?


So I really like that you could have a way to remedy that, but personally I would want my model to not need that crutch. Some of this is the same problem that football has. I really like the landscape in both the URC and Prem, but Ireland with Leinster specifically, and France, are a problem IMO. In football this has turned CL pool stages in to simply cash cow fixtures for the also ran countries teams who just want to have a Real Madrid or ManC to lose to in their pool for that bumper revenue hit. It's always been a comp that had suffered for real interest until the knockouts as well (they might have changed it in recent years?).


You've got some great principles but I'm not sure it's going to deliver on that hard hitting impact right from the start without the best teams playing in it. I think you might need to think about the most minimal requirement/way/performance, a team needs to execute to stay in the Champions Cup as I was having some thougt about that earlier and had some theory I can't remember. First they could get entry by being a losing quarter finalist in the challenge, then putting all their eggs in the Champions pool play bucket in order to never finish last in their pool, all the while showing the same indifference to their league some show to EPCR rugby now, just to remain in champions. You extrapolate that out and is there ever likely to be more change to the champions cup that the bottom four sides rotate out each year for the 4 challenge teams? Are the leagues ever likely to have the sort of 'flux' required to see some variation? Even a good one like Englands.


I'd love to have a table at hand were you can see all the outcomes, and know how likely any of your top 12 teams are going break into Champions rubyg on th back it it are?

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f
fl 7 hours ago
‘The problem with this year’s Champions Cup? Too many English clubs’

"Right, so even if they were the 4 worst teams in Champions Cup, you'd still have them back by default?"

I think (i) this would literally never happen, (ii) it technically couldn't quite happen, given at least 1 team would qualify via the challenge cup, so if the actual worst team in the CC qualified it would have to be because they did really well after being knocked down to the challenge cup.

But the 13th-15th teams could qualify and to be fair I didn't think about this as a possibility. I don't think a team should be able to qualify via the Champions Cup if they finish last in their group.


Overall though I like my idea best because my thinking is, each league should get a few qualification spots, and then the rest of the spots should go to the next best teams who have proven an ability to be competitive in the champions cup. The elite French clubs generally make up the bulk of the semi-final spots, but that doesn't (necessarily) mean that the 5th-8th best French clubs would be competitive in a slimmed down champions cup. The CC is always going to be really great competition from the semis onwards, but the issue is that there are some pretty poor showings in the earlier rounds. Reducing the number of teams would help a little bit, but we could improve things further by (i) ensuring that the on-paper "worst" teams in the competition have a track record of performing well in the CC, and (ii) by incentivising teams to prioritise the competition. Teams that have a chance to win the whole thing will always be incentivised to do that, but my system would incentivise teams with no chance of making the final to at least try to win a few group stage matches.


"I'm afraid to say"

Its christmas time; there's no need to be afraid!

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