Leinster have tunnel vision for Croke Park clash with Harlequins

So much so, in fact, that he wasn’t even in South Africa last weekend as a second-string Leinster side dug deep to claim a brilliant win against the Sharks in the URC. Tyler Bleyendaal wasn’t in Durban either. Nor was Jacques Nienaber.

All three watched that game from Dublin having spent the week working at home with the squad’s returning Six Nations contingent ahead of this Saturday’s Champions Cup round of 16 tie against Harlequins at Croke Park.

That Leinster should be using tunnel vision for this tie and for this competition is hardly surprising. It’s seven years now since they won that fourth star, since when there have been four final losses and endless depths of hurt.

Working on strategy and working out the English opposition would have been part of that. More time again was spent on simply flushing the Ireland playbook from the system and addressing the lingering disappointment from a three-in-a-row bid that fell short.

The Ireland contingent’s first day back in blue was spent on a retreat with former Cork hurler and performance consultant Ronan Conway, and McBryde put his own spin on the Championship and how his players might want to digest it.

“From my perspective, you've just won a Triple Crown and, okay, maybe it's not what you wanted to end up with, but sometimes that's life, do you know what I mean? Shit happens. I know you can’t print ‘shit happens’, but shit does f*****g happen at the end of the day.

"Listen, you take on board the lessons learnt from that, do you know what I mean?” 

He’s six years in Ireland now. He gets the expectation levels. Internal and external. The key now is that everything Six Nations is dealt with and repackaged in a way that helps Leinster from here on in because rugby, like time, waits for no man or woman.

Those players who put in such an epic shift against the Sharks in Durban last Saturday will only return to the UCD training HQ on Tuesday, five days out from their date with Quins, and McBryde is happy to admit that this isn’t ideal.

Six of those who featured at the King’s Park last weekend played their part in the matchday 23 back in January when Leinster brought their Champions Cup pool stage duties to a close with a big win against Bath at the Aviva Stadium.

Among those unpacking their bags after the recent southern hemisphere chapter are Jimmy O’Brien, Tommy O’Brien, Ciaran Frawley, Cian Healy, Thomas Clarkson and Ross Byrne. These are key men in their own right.

It all makes for an awkward and hasty job of reintegration for a wider group that hasn’t really played together in well over two months with Will Connors unavailable but Rónan Kelleher is a possible candidate for a place as he recovers from a neck injury.

“If you were to say to us at the start of the season that we would be in this position, I think we would have bitten your hand off,” said McBryde. “Those boys coming in will be bouncing after their victory out in South Africa.

“They'll be chomping at the bit because that group of players, their goal is to get a starting shirt for Leinster, especially in Europe. They showed on the weekend how hungry they are and what it means to them.” 

Facing them this week is a Harlequins side that seems built for the fast and furiously exciting Premiership in England. The weekend just gone saw them come out second-best to Bath at The Rec in a game that produced 75 points.

McBryde knows Quins head coach Danny Wilson well from the latter’s time in the club game in Wales. And scrum coach Adam Jones is a Welsh legend. All that will go into the stew Leinster have been preparing this last few weeks.

No stones unturned. Not here, not now.