{"id":391672,"date":"2026-04-10T14:01:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T14:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/391672\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T14:01:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T14:01:07","slug":"dan-sheehan-to-captain-leinster-against-sale-with-caelan-doris-missing-out-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/391672\/","title":{"rendered":"Dan Sheehan to captain Leinster against Sale with Caelan Doris missing out \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Caelan Doris<\/a> has been ruled out of Leinster<\/a>\u2019s Champions Cup<\/a> quarter-final against Sale Sharks at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday (Kick-off 5.30pm, live on Premier Sports 1). In his absence Jack Conan shifts from blindside to number eight and Ryan Baird moves from lock to the backrow as James Ryan returns to the secondrow.<\/p>\n

Dan Sheehan will captain the side in the absence of Doris, while Andrew Porter has also been ruled out due to the pectoral injury which forced him off midway through last Sunday\u2019s 49-31 win over Edinburgh.<\/p>\n

With Paddy McCarthy and Jack Boyle long-term absentees, this means that 20-year-old academy prop Alex Usanov will make his first start in the Champions Cup, having replaced Porter at half-time last weekend.<\/p>\n

Garry Ringrose also returns, meaning Rieko Ioane moves to the left wing, where he played the last quarter and scored his second try for Leinster to complete last Sunday\u2019s win. <\/p>\n

On the bench, Ronan Kelleher, Jerry Cahir and Scott Penny are also recalled to the match-day squad. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, as expected Sale Sharks Director of Rugby Alex Sanderson has been forced to reshuffle his frontrow following the season-ending injuries which loose-head prop Bevan Rodd and hooker Luke Cowan-Dickie sustained in last weekend\u2019s Round-of-16 win away to Harlequins. In addition, replacement hooker Nathan Jibulu was suspended for six weeks after a citing against him for biting was upheld by a disciplinary committee.<\/p>\n

The 24-year-old hooker Ethan Caine will start a Champions Cup game for the first time, and he will pack down in an all-academy frontrow with Si McIntyre, who was on the bench last week, and highly-regarded England tighthead Asher Opoku-Fordjour, who made his comeback from injury in the last round at The Stoop.<\/p>\n

In addition to Caine and McIntyre, Sanderson\u2019s third change to his starting XV sees the vastly experienced, once-capped Springboks centre Rob du Preez – brother of number eight Dan – return from injury. Academy hooker Alfie Longstaff is joined on the bench by prop Ralph McEachran.<\/p>\n

Two other English internationals among Sale\u2019s other injured absentees are the Curry twins, Tom and Ben.<\/p>\n

Leinster: Hugo Keenan; Tommy O\u2019Brien, Garry Ringrose, Jamie Osborne, Rieko Ioane; Harry Byrne, Jamison Gibson-Park; Alex Usanov, Dan Sheehan (capt), Tadhg Furlong, Joe McCarthy, James Ryan, Ryan Baird, Josh van der Flier, Jack Conan. Replacements: R\u00f3nan Kelleher, Jerry Cahir, Thomas Clarkson, Max Deegan, Scott Penny, Luke McGrath, Ciar\u00e1n Frawley, Robbie Henshaw.<\/p>\n

Sale Sharks: Joe Carpenter; Tom Roebuck, Rob du Preez, Rekeiti Ma\u2019asi-White, Tom O\u2019Flaherty; George Ford, Gus Warr; Si McIntyre, Ethan Caine, Asher Opoku-Fordjour, Ernst van Rhyn (capt) Ben Bamber, Jacques Vermeulen, Sam Dugdale, Dan du Preez. Replacements: Alfie Longstaff, Ralph McEachran, James Harper, Reuben Logan, Jos Gilmore, Dom Hanson, Marius Louw, Alex Wills.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Caelan Doris has been ruled out of Leinster\u2019s Champions Cup quarter-final against Sale Sharks at the Aviva Stadium…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":391673,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[28581,32728,65851,61,60,11287,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-391672","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-caelan-doris","9":"tag-champions-cup","10":"tag-dan-sheehan","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-leinster-rugby","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391672","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=391672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/391673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}