{"id":447458,"date":"2026-01-30T13:56:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T13:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/447458\/"},"modified":"2026-01-30T13:56:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T13:56:07","slug":"united-rugby-championship-reiko-ioane-returns-in-much-changed-leinster-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/447458\/","title":{"rendered":"United Rugby Championship: Reiko Ioane returns in much-changed Leinster team"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">All Black Reiko Ioane returns to start in a much-changed Leinster side for their United Rugby Championship game against Edinburgh at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Leo Cullen is without a host of Ireland internationals and makes 12 changes in total to the side that beat Connacht last weekend, a result that moved them up to third in the URC table.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Only Joshua Kenny, RG Snyman and Charlie Tector retain their places, with Tector switching to fly-half as Luke McGrath comes in to captain the side from scrum-half.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ciaran Mangan and Andrew Sparrow will make their first starts for Leinster while Ruben Moloney, John McKee and Jerry Cahir come into the side.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Brian Deeny, Max Deegan, Scott Penny and Diarmuid Mangan are also included as Niall Smyth, Gus McCarthy, Will Connors and Fintan Gunne all drop to the bench.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Leinster: A Osborne; J Kenny, R Ioane, C Mangan, R Moloney; C Tector, L McGrath (capt); J Cahir, J McKee, A Sparrow; RG Snyman, B Deeney; M Deegan, S Penny, D Mangan.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Replacements: G McCarthy, A Usanov, N Smyth, C O&#8217;Tighearnaigh, J Eriscon, W Connors, F Gunne, H McLaughlin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"All Black Reiko Ioane returns to start in a much-changed Leinster side for their United Rugby Championship game&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":447459,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-447458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/447459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}