Champions Cup Round of 16: Leinster v Edinburgh, Aviva Stadium, Sunday, 5.30pm \u2013 Live on Premier Sports 1<\/p>\n
Ryan Baird<\/a> has been named in Leinster\u2019s<\/a> starting XV for their Champions Cup<\/a> Round of 16 clash against Edinburgh this Sunday at the Aviva Stadium in his first game since suffering a fractured tibia in Ireland\u2019s loss to South Africa last November.<\/p>\n In the continuing absence of James Ryan and with RG Snyman being ruled out for the rest of the season, Baird makes a timely return ahead of the business end of the season for Leinster. The 26-year-old make a string of man-of-the-match performances in Leinster\u2019s surge to the URC title at the end of last season.<\/p>\n The other two changes to the starting XV from last week\u2019s 36-19 win over the Scarlets see Rieko Ioane return at outside centre in place of Garry Ringrose, who is believed to have suffered a back injury in that game, while Jack Conan has been restored to the backrow.<\/p>\n Jimmy O\u2019Brien is moved from fullback to the left wing in place of Joshua Kenny, who misses out altogether despite his two-try display against the Scarlets, while Brian Deeny and Max Deegan move to a much-changed bench.<\/p>\n In addition to Thomas Clarkson and Ciar\u00e1n Frawley being reinstated among the replacements, Luke McGrath is also recalled to earn what will be his 250th Leinster cap, while the 20-year-old loosehead Alex Usanov is in line for his Champions Cup debut in what will be his fifth appearance for the province.<\/p>\n It\u2019s been quite a fall from grace for Sam Prendergast considering he was the starting outhalf in Ireland\u2019s opening two games in the Six Nations and now, like in the final three games of that tournament, he misses out on the matchday squad.<\/p>\n \u201cSam is such a quality player and he\u2019s going to be an amazing player,\u201d said Cullen. \u201cYou think of what he\u2019s achieved so far as a very, very young man. This is one selection and we\u2019ll see. It\u2019s just making sure that we have a very competitive group. There\u2019s other players that have also missed out this week that are serious players.<\/p>\n \u201cUnfortunately, we can\u2019t put everyone in there. But if we want to be successful in the two competitions, which is what we want, we need everyone to be making sure we\u2019re fully engaged as the season goes on and delivers everything we possibly can for the team. So yeah, Harry wins this one and we\u2019ll see you in the next few weeks go.\u201d<\/p>\n Regarding Baird\u2019s return, Cullen said: \u201cRyan has worked incredibly hard to get himself in good shape and he\u2019s got himself in great shape. He did a matchday warm-up last week. He sat in the box with the coaches during the game and yeah, it\u2019s big to step in straight back into a knock-out game, but he\u2019s a big player for the team over the last number of years and hopefully hits the ground running this weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n In their 18 games this season Leinster have conceded 18 yellow cards and Cullen accepted that if they are to lift silverware this season that ratio has to come down significantly.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, absolutely, and we\u2019ve tried to address that here ourselves as well. So yeah, there\u2019s lots of different reasons at different times of the year as well, when we come under pressure and how we manage that. So definitely, yeah, our discipline needs to be better.\u201d<\/p>\n LEINSTER: Hugo Keenan; Tommy O\u2019Brien, Rieko Ioane, Jamie Osborne, Jimmy O\u2019Brien; Harry Byrne, Jamison Gibson-Park; Andrew Porter, Dan Sheehan, Tadhg Furlong; Joe McCarthy, Ryan Baird; Jack Conan, Josh van der Flier, Caelan Doris (capt).<\/p>\n Replacements: Gus McCarthy, Alex Usanov, Thomas Clarkson, Brian Deeny, Max Deegan, Luke McGrath, Ciar\u00e1n Frawley, Robbie Henshaw.<\/p>\n EDINBURGH: Piers O\u2019Conor; Darcy Graham, Matt Currie, James Lang, Malelili Satala; Ross Thompson, Charlie Shiel; Pierre Schoeman, Ewan Ashman, D\u2019arcy Rae; Marshall Sykes, Grant Gilchrist (capt); Liam McConnell, Dylan Richardson, Ben Muncaster. <\/p>\n Replacements: Jerry Blyth-Lafferty, Boan Venter, Paul Hill, Glen Young, Freddy Douglas, Ben Vellacott, Mosese Tuipulotu, Jack Brown.<\/p>\n Referee: Luke Pearce (RFU).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Champions Cup Round of 16: Leinster v Edinburgh, Aviva Stadium, Sunday, 5.30pm \u2013 Live on Premier Sports 1…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380220,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[32728,42,11287,43,75387,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-380219","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-champions-cup","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-leinster-rugby","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-ryan-baird","13":"tag-top-news","14":"tag-top-stories","15":"tag-topnews","16":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380219","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=380219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}