{"id":241794,"date":"2026-01-13T01:27:21","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T01:27:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/241794\/"},"modified":"2026-01-13T01:27:21","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T01:27:21","slug":"tony-ward-leinster-caveman-approach-worked-against-la-rochelle-but-i-hate-the-jacques-nienaber-imprint","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/241794\/","title":{"rendered":"Tony Ward: Leinster \u2018caveman\u2019 approach worked against La Rochelle, but I hate the Jacques Nienaber imprint"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"The tactics of Leinster senior coach Jacques Nienaber are not pleasing on the eye. Photo: Sportsfile\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/5e9fb171-4951-41ae-9938-79a6c7768e14.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">The tactics of Leinster senior coach Jacques Nienaber are not pleasing on the eye. Photo: Sportsfile<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Outside of the highest international level if there is a better quality competition beyond the Champions Cup then I don\u2019t know it. Yet, I have to be honest here and say the first 39 minutes at the Stade Mayol yesterday was pure muck. The 40th was spared by a Marius Domon try and his accompanying conversion which gave Toulon a 7-6 lead at the break.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Munster pressured effectively without the ball but some of the home team\u2019s handling in that opening period bordered on the pathetic. Thankfully, it turned into a game of very different halves as within ten minutes of the restart three further tries had lit up the game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The tactics of Leinster senior coach Jacques Nienaber are not pleasing on the eye. Photo: Sportsfile Outside of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":241795,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,11287,11897,112,50534],"class_list":["post-241794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-leinster-rugby","tag-munster-rugby","tag-sports","tag-tony-ward"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}