Leinster coach Leo Cullen is expecting a difficult test at Thomond Park on Friday night, as the URC leaders look to extend their winning start to the season to 11 matches.
With no game on the first weekend of January, Cullen said “a good chunk” of his Ireland contingent will come back for the clash and all eyes will be on whether Sam Prendergast will be allowed to go head to head with Jack Crowley in Limerick.
Considering cohesion has been such an issue, Cullen is likely to field close to his first team to build rhythm ahead of the January trip to La Rochelle.
Leinster rotated heavily for their 20-12 win over Connacht at the Aviva Stadium and lost Jack Conan and Max Deegan to injury.
With a six-day turnaround, it’s unlikely that pair will be in the squad this week but they won’t get much sympathy from their hosts, who suffered more injury woe in Belfast and are without Jean Kleyn, Craig Casey, Thaakir Abrahams and Alex Nankivell for the next couple of weeks at least.
Leinster haven’t lost in Limerick since 2018, eking out a 9-3 win in awful conditions last year, but when asked if it still a fortress, Cullen said it remains a tough place to go.
“What do you mean by fortress? Knights at the gate? It’s very hard to win there, I would suggest, so I don’t think it is that much easier,” Cullen said.
“For us, it’s what we do this week so it’s a short week, a six-day turnaround. It’s trying to be in the moment.
“For the lads, it’s try and recover and some of the guys coming back in who have had some time off, they just need to get back up to speed because you take a week off, you need to turn it back on again.
“Then we all need to know that we are in the moment. So if you are off, you are enjoying family time and your loved ones. That’s important. So it’s about getting that balance right.
“There is no point training when you are thinking about family time and when you are in family time thinking about training, because you need to be in the moment of what you are doing.
“It’s the skill at this time of year. It’s easy to say, it’s so much harder to do it. It will always be a great occasion regardless.
“Quite often it comes down to the preparation leading into these games.
“Thinking back to a couple of games where we might have struggled where a couple of things haven’t gone our way and you are in the game, and it has this snowball effect.
“When you prepare well and start well in the game down there, then you can exert some of the dominance and put the opposition under pressure.
“So, that’s very 101. Saying it is the easy part doing it, as I said, is the hard part.”
With so many changes, Leinster’s performance was understandably clunky but they can be satisfied with their Christmas dinner when they look at the League table.
“We just needed to dog out a win today, so we’re really pleased,” Cullen said of Saturday’s game.
“We get four [points], Connacht get zero. I think everyone could look around and get too ambitious looking for four tries too early potentially in that exact moment. And even at the end then to take the bonus point away from Connacht, so it’s important for us as well.
“It just keeps us ticking along in the League and that’s what it’s all about, just grinding out wins, particularly this time of year when you have a lot of disruptions.”