{"id":443030,"date":"2026-05-11T10:09:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T10:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/443030\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T10:09:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T10:09:08","slug":"ciaran-frawley-strengthens-leinster-case-as-leo-cullen-weighs-champions-cup-final-selection-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/443030\/","title":{"rendered":"Ciar\u00e1n Frawley strengthens Leinster case as Leo Cullen weighs Champions Cup final selection \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leinster\u2019s<\/a> 31-7 victory over the Lions guarantees a URC<\/a> quarter-final, the venue and the identity of their opponents are still up for grabs as they prepare for the Ospreys\u2019 visit to Dublin next Saturday in the final match of the league stage of the tournament.<\/p>\n

Leo Cullen<\/a> confirmed there would be both changes and opportunities for players who want to stake a claim for the Champions Cup<\/a> final against Bordeaux B\u00e8gles in Bilbao on Saturday week and the knock-out aspect of the URC tournament.<\/p>\n

A changing injury profile suggests that more players could come back into the mix, but on foot of Saturday\u2019s win, others stood tall, especially in the context of the backline, where Jimmy O\u2019Brien, Jamie Osborne, Rieko Ioane and Ciar\u00e1n Frawley all impressed.<\/p>\n

Ioane started the Champions Cup semi-final win over Toulon, Osborne came on early for the injured Robbie Henshaw, but O\u2019Brien and Frawley missed out. All advanced their cases, but Frawley\u2019s will probably inspire the most conjecture.<\/p>\n

He started at fullback but moved to outhalf for the final quarter, a period in which Leinster scored three tries \u2013 Ioane, O\u2019Brien and replacement Hugo Keenan. It coincided with the home side\u2019s zippiest rugby, playing with good shape, tempo and accuracy to beard the Lions and take the game from 14-7 to 31-7.<\/p>\n

Cullen recognised the impact of the bench. \u201cSome of the bench guys added well. With Ciar\u00e1n at 15, so something we wanted to see was him at 10 with Hugo on the bench. Even with Hugh Cooney, we wanted to see him at 13, we wanted to see Rieko on the wing. We\u2019re looking at certain things all the time because we\u2019re gearing up for knock-out games at the end of the day.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know how many competitions where you play a final of a Champions Cup [and then] a quarter-final the week after, and you might be going from Bilbao to South Africa. We are making changes because we want to keep the group competitive. We want to see lots of different combinations. That comes at risk, of course it does.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it keeps the squad hungry, motivated. We want to give everyone a genuine opportunity to, say, \u2018pick me\u2019 for the knock-out games. So that\u2019s what we\u2019ll continue to do with one more regular-season game. We\u2019re not going to pick the same team as we picked today. There\u2019ll be changes. It\u2019s a win. It\u2019s five points, that\u2019s what you want. The Lions don\u2019t get anything.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Leinster tame the Lions to improve chances of top-two URC finishOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\"Leinster’sLeinster\u2019s Ciar\u00e1n Frawley. Photograph: Billy Stickland\/Inpho <\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe it did look a little bit disjointed at times but on the flip side, there\u2019s a lot of really positive defensive sets. The Lions are a very good attacking team, score a lot of tries, so to keep them to seven points is really pleasing. When the game was at 14-7, which it was for a good chunk of time, it\u2019s a proper arm wrestle. I thought the lads stuck at it well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Joshua Kenny was a late withdrawal, which meant that Andrew Osborne was plucked from a lunchtime A fixture against Ulster to start on the wing. Will Connors, who had started positively, had a little bit of a niggle before the match and came off early. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Leinster\u2019s ability to rise from the canvas deserves the admiration of all rugby peopleOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leinster\u2019s 31-7 victory over the Lions guarantees a URC quarter-final, the venue and the identity of their opponents…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":443031,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,11287,28577,112,14881],"class_list":["post-443030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-leinster-rugby","tag-leo-cullen","tag-sports","tag-united-rugby-championship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443030","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=443030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443030\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}