Au revoir Cheiks. Time to Stade and deliver.

Director of Rugby. Interesting move for Cheika. He certainly has the pedigree to achieve great things with Stade Francais. Considering that we are already facing our new coach (Schmidt) in the next round of the Heineken Cup it now seems inevitable we will face Stade.

I think Cheika has got his timing spot on with his departure. He brought the team to the pinnacle of European club rugby and is now in with a shout of repeating that feat while also well controlling the Magners League this year. He can now pave the way for a new coach to put his stamp on what is becoming once again a youthful and entertaining Leinster side. The likes of Conway and Macken should prove their value in the coming years alonside the established stars.

Thanks and best of luck Cheiks.

International round-up

Some cracking games this weekend, unfortunately none of them were at Croke Park!

On Friday, Ireland U20s and the Irish Wolfhounds won out against Italy U20s and Scotland ‘A’ in Ravenhill and Athlone, respectively.

The youth team contained Andrew Conway; Darren Hudson, Brendan Macken, Jack O’Connell, Ben Marshall, Rhys Ruddock, and Dominic Ryan from the Leinster academy, as well as four more Leinster boys on the bench (Robin O’Sullivan, Brian Kingston, David Doyle and Stewart Maguire). A hat-trick of tries from Hudson as well as one from Macken helped Ireland to a 39-0 win over an impassioned Italian side.

Leinster’s academy help Ireland U20s to a convincing win over Italy

Up in Belfast, two tries from Fergus McFadden and one from possible future Leinster scrum-half Isaac Boss allowed Ireland to dominate their Scottish counterparts in a high-scoring 34-19 victory. The side also contained Devin Toner (who sat out ten minutes in the sin-bin at one point) and Shane Jennings, as well as having Mike Ross on the bench.

The senior side, containing no fewer than seven of our boys (Kearney, O’Driscoll, D’Arcy, Healy, Cullen, McLoughlin and Heaslip) with a further pair on the bench (Reddan and O’Brien), ground out a pretty dull 29-11 victory over a poor Italian side, with Jamie Heaslip scoring the opening try at Croker.

Jamie Heaslip donates a match ball to someone in the Hill after scoring against Italy.

Finally, I’ve just watched a good – but error strewn – match between Scotland and France at Murrayfield (I love that place since last May!) where Nathan (Beanz Meanz) Hines played the full 80 minutes in an ultimately fruitless 18-9 loss to France.

Phew! I reckon that’s a total of 25 Leinster players on international duty this weekend! Hardly, surprising then that a very threadbare Leinster ‘A’ side lost out 9-0 to Ulster Ravens in Navan, with all the visitors’ points coming from former Ireland ‘A’ international Niall O’Connor…

(…actually, following a similar campaign to rename the Ireland ‘A’s, any chance of getting the Leinster second-string given a cool NFL-type name? Any suggestions welcome!)

Full team from that match below:

LEINSTER ‘A’: 15: Niall Morris (Shane Monahan, 69), 14: David Kearney, 13: Eoin O’Malley, 12: Kyle Tonetti, 11: Simon Keogh (Michael Keating, 69), 10: Ian Madigan, 9: David Moore (Chris Keane, 66); 1: Arthur Lyons, 2: Richardt Strauss (Jason Harris-Wright, 56), 3: Ben Barclay (Martin Moore, 49), 4: Ciaran Ruddock (Jordi Murphy, 68), 5: Trevor Hogan, 6: Eoin Sheriff, 7: Paul Ryan, 8: Stephen Keogh (C)

REPLACEMENT NOT USED: Colm Mallon

To finish the international news, Shane Jennings and Jonny Sexton have been called back into the Ireland squad for next weekend’s match away in Paris, as eleven players were added by coach Declan Kidney today.

And a final couple of things…if you go to the IRFU website, they’re plugging the new jersey with a picture of 3 of Ireland’s leading players…the players they chose are Jamie Haslip, Luke Fitzgerald and Brian O’Driscoll; Apparently Rob Kearney’s gutted not to be considered among the 3 best male models in the Irish (and, indeed, Leinster, rugby)! Also, I’d say Tony McGahan nearly wet himself with excitement when he saw the new O2 bus-stops ads for broadband that say ‘borrow Brian O’Driscoll’: I reckon he took one look at de Villiers and Earls and went straight to his closest O2 shop!