It certainly wasn't good but it wasn't that bad. We lost Frawley with a wrist / forearm early in the game. We brought on Tom Daly at out-half and they scored four tries through the 10 / 12 channel, each orchestrated through a very in-form Toby Flood. We also lost Will Connors very early, replaced on the flank by Deegan.D4surfer wrote:42 17 to Newcastle. That was pretty awful. It was hard to pick out any good performances. Luke McGrath looked sharp when he came on. Mick Kearney wasn’t great for the time he was on. Defense all around was dreadful.
Falcons more or less played the same team all the way through** and were better than us, particularly in defence and protection of possession. We turned over possession in the tackle and missed one-up tackles regularly - even Fardy and Tomane - and generally didn't look like we knew whether we should be trying to execute the process or compete for a victory. Our line-out was very poor until Molony and Brian Byrne arrived.
Not a typical pre-season performance from Leinster and no star performances. Mick Kearney make the odd mistake, but put in the effort. This guy needs real rugby - not more training. Our back-row forwards must be coming onto the ball not wrestling for it going backwards. Tomane and O'Loughlin need time together and both need to find Barry Daly with the quality passes that both are capable of.
Richards came for a win in pre-season and got it. Cullen and Lancaster were trying to assess whether our third-string pack could stand a stern examination and they can't. Without an out-half it was impossible to draw any other conclusions about Leinster. But nobody will bully Newcastle this season.
** Post-match reports say Newcastle made 10+ changes at half-time. No such changes were notified to those in attendance and the players numbers remained at, largely. 1-15. It certainly appeared as much the same team until last 15 mins.