Hopes for the season

[COYBIB]

1/ We see the initial sparks of what is the begining of a golden generation of Leinster talent. I'd love to see an extremely regular (Pro12) partnership of Luke McGrath and Joey Carbury flourish, it would be great to see Henshaw and Ringrose terrorise teams at the highest level similar to their predecessors, it would be nice to see a lock combination emerge, perhaps Toner / Kearney with maybe an extremely reliable Molony / Nagle undercard.

We have loose heads coming out the yazoo, it makes me nervous, either I'd like to see one (Porter) switch to tight head, or if we're going to lose one, maybe Dooley but in exchange for an equally promising player in an area of need for us (Stockdale would be nice).

2/ Coaching success. It's the same for every coach, past and present, the first season is generally given as a feeling out process, it's success or lack there of doesn't generally tend to sway opinion to extremely one way or another, but the second season is where the dye is cast. It's compared and scrutanised against the previous season to attempt to determine the trajectory the team is headed under the current regime. The nose dive second season under MOC cost him his job. I really hope we see growth in squad as a whole and I actually quite liked how we played a lot of the times last season, but towards the end we clearly ran out of ideas and began to stagnate, if not regress. But as a whole, given all of the circumstances, I considered it to be a reasonably satisfactory first season, giving the benefit of the doubt that this is a process that will soon commence a journey on a steep upwards trend... if that does not materialise, or if it even goes the other way, opinions can swing very heavily very quickly, so I hope the coaching team and the squad are up to the challenge.

3/ Silverware. No matter who you are, if you are coaching Leinster, silverware is expected every couple of seasons. There's no doubt we're under rewarded for our almost total dominence of the domestic league, you could argue in up to 10 of the 15 seasons so far that we were very close to being winners and could have, or sometimes should have won it that year, but we have 4, tied for the top, when it comes to the league, anything outside the top 4 is completely unnacceptable and a home semi is pretty much the standard set as our goal each season. A bit more clinical in the knock out stages and we could and I think should be racking up those Pro12 trophies. I hope Cullen is the man to do it in a new, long lasting generation of players and coaches that consistently deliver.

[mtleinster]

One single hope for the season; that we are not knocked out of Europe because of home results. we are fortunate enough to say that we have a pool where we can say we are good enough to win all three games at home. If we do not, we not only have to look at the team, but also ourselves as supporters. These are big games and should be treated as such. the RBS/Aviva should be an intimidating place for any visiting team. Winning on the road is going to take a bit of luck but one away win should qualify us for the quarters with some LBP / TB's