Gerry Thornley writes: Ross Byrne will be as motivated as anyone for this game. Were he to guide the good Leinster ship home then it would augur well for both the World Cup and post-Sexton era IrishTimesSport Leinster LaRochelle championscup
So far, so good. It helped that the baton was passed on at a time when Byrne’s form and confidence had never been higher, having nailed that clutch kick against Australia and become the de facto back-up to Sexton for Ireland as well at long last in the Six Nations.
“I think he does everything really well,” Lancaster said of Byrne last November. “He makes the team tick, there is no doubt about that. I think his core skills are very good, his passing, catching off both hands, his understanding of the game is excellent, again he’s not a young player, he’s 29 I’d say,” guessed Lancaster, when actually adding a year to Byrne’s age.
He is the second leading points scorer in this season’s Champions Cup behind his La Rochelle counterpart Antoine Hastoy, but whereas the latter’s kicking ratio is 78%, Byrne’s is 88%. Byrne had the strength of mind to politely refuse, reasoning that why should he move when he was already being given plenty of game time with his native province? Indeed, in that 2017-18 season, Byrne played 26 times for Leinster, 19 of them starting, and accumulated more minutes, 1,560, than any other player in the squad.
In any event, when fate decreed that Byrne was summoned from relative obscurity to 24th man before being named as a replacement an hour before kick-off to being afforded the difficult clutch kick to beat the Wallabies, very few would have doubted his ability to bisect the posts. In 25 games for province and country this season he has almost played 1,300 minutes and, of course, has been on the winning side every time.
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