Irish provinces look undercooked ahead of opening Champions Cup fixtures

In yet another change of format to the season, for the first time since 2018 the opening round of the Champions Cup has been shunted into October next weekend and as anticipated, through no fault of their own, the Irish provinces look decidedly undercooked compared to their French and English opponents.Following Connacht’s mauling in Glasgow, Ulster’s comeback draw with Munster, and Leinster’s patchy 29-5 win in their RDS homecoming on Saturday night, the Irish quartet all sit in the bottom half of the table before this first of nine interruptions to the URC season. What’s more, the provinces have only been permitted to use the bulk of their Ireland summer tourists over the weekend’s third round of matches.Next Saturday, Leinster are away to Clermont and Munster host Racing 92 in Páirc Uí Chaoimh, two sides who are also in the bottom half of the Top 14. Clermont lost 23-22 at home to Bordeaux Bègles and Racing were beaten 29-15 in Toulon on Saturday, but they have each played six, winning two apiece.Meanwhile, a rebooted Saracens sit third in the Premiership after beating Bristol 30-7 at home ahead of their Champions Cup game against Connacht in the Dexcom next Saturday.READ MORE“That’s just the hand that we have,” said Leo Cullen after Saturday’s win. “We just need to do what we can. Hence, why we brought the wider group [41 players] to South Africa as well.“We’d love to get more wins on the board, but it’s been a bit of a slow start from the four provinces in many ways. We’ve had three wins between us over the first three rounds. It’s not a great return,” he admitted.“Listen, we are where we are now. We just need to get fully focused on the challenge, which is hugely exciting.“It’s one of the cooler places I’ve played,” said Cullen of the Stade Marcel Michelin, one of European rugby’s most iconic grounds. “It’s been a long time since we’ve been there, so most of our guys won’t have played there previously. You’d be surprised if any of them maybe have played there previously. But it’s a great rugby ground and it means a lot in the town, so it does. It’s a proper test for us now.”There’s plenty to work on in the week ahead. After a three-try salvo in the opening 21 minutes in front of an expectant 20,000 full house on an ideal autumnal night for the Laya’s grand reopening, Leinster went the next 55 minutes without scoring.“The cohesion around attack combinations there is probably the big thing, where we just coughed the ball a little bit too cheaply,” said Cullen. “It’s just making sure we value possession properly and we look after it and make opposition teams work harder defensively for longer.”Leinster's head coach Leo Cullen is looking forward to travelling to France for Champions Cup. Photograph: Ben Brady/Inpho Hugo Keenan and Jimmy O’Brien looked sharp in opening the scoring, and O’Brien clearly liked being back home, for in adding a second he repeated his brace the last time Leinster played at the RDS when beating Connacht n May 2024.But the brightest spark of all was Sam Prendergast. His cameo in Durban a week previously when setting up a late bonus-point try has caught the eye. Here, a striking feature of the 23-year-old outhalf’s performance was his desire to be a running threat in addition to his usual array of passes, and after missing his first three kicks, he finished with a flourish, creating and converting the last two tries.“It’s probably something that I’m trying to work on personally, being a bit more of a run threat,” he admitted afterwards. “There’s still a few opportunities where I probably ran when I should have passed, and I probably could have done better when I was running. There’s probably a lot of improvement on it but yeah, it was promising.”Prendergast was equally self-critical when reflecting on last season’s “mixed bag”, even when returning to outhalf for the successful URC knockout stages.“I just learned to take it week by week,” he added, and fully aware of his critics out there, likewise he admitted there is still more room for improvement in his defence.“Maybe I’ve been criticised in the past about it but I’m trying to evolve that part of my game. There were still missed tackles out there tonight so I’ll still keep working on it. It’s 50 per cent of the game so I need to keep working on it.”Leinster's Sam Prendergast makes a break against Cardiff. Photograph: Ben Brady/Inpho Looking ahead to his third game away to a French club next Saturday, Prendergast said: “They’ll be flying and it’s always tough going away there. “I’ve limited experience over there, but it’s always pretty hostile. It’s also very cool. It’s always very hard. I remember Bayonne last year was exceptionally difficult. La Rochelle the year before was difficult. It’s never easy over in France. It won’t be easy over there.“Leinster and Clermont have a lot of history so it’s a really exciting week for us. The chat in the dressingroom already is we’re really looking forward to it.”