opted for a youthful side<\/a> for his first squad with Todd Lawlor set to make his debut from full-back and academy forward Dylan McNeice named among the replacements. Out-half Caspar Gabriel is also set to make his first start.<\/p>\nForty-one players have travelled to South Africa with Cullen hoping to improve on the province’s strength and depth.<\/p>\n
\n
“It gives us an opportunity to build the strength and depth in the group. Some guys have really stood up well.<\/p>\n
“There’s a couple of guys who will be making their debuts for Leinster this weekend which is hugely exciting. We\u2019ve three academy players in the starting XV. Another three academy players on the bench this week and we\u2019ve three other academy players in the wider squad.<\/p>\n
“It’s only positive for the future of the club. What better place to test yourself than away here in South Africa. The home of the world champions.<\/p>\n
“Anyone who would watch the Lions – especially when they play here at Ellis Park – all across the course of last season and how dangerous they are and how they play the game.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s a serious challenge for our guys and they\u2019ve been made well aware of it over the course of pre-season. We\u2019re all curious to see how they get on now.”<\/p>\n
Cullen also confirmed that Caelan Doris would keep the captain’s armband for this season but that Max Deegan would lead the side out this weekend as Doris continues to recover from a foot injury.<\/p>\n
“Caelan is unbelievably well respected within the group for the work he does on the field but off the field as well,” he said. “He\u2019s not here in South Africa with us right now but he still has huge respect in the group and he will be the person to lead the group this season even if he won\u2019t be playing in this block of games which we\u2019ve also discussed as a group here.<\/p>\n
“Other people will need to step up to the mark in terms of how they lead the group.”<\/p>\n
Leinster: Todd Lawlor, Tommy O’Brien, Hugh Cooney, Charlie Tector, Andrew Osborne, Caspar Gabriel, Fintan Gunne, Alex Usanov, Gus McCarthy, Andrew Porter, Ryan Baird, Conor O’Tighearnaigh, Max Deegan (captain), Scott Penny, Josh Ericson<\/p>\n
Replacements: Stephen Smyth, Peter Dooley, Niall Smyth, Brian Deeney, Dylan McNeice, Oliver Coffey, Harry Byrne, Ciar\u00e1n Mangan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leinster head coach Leo Cullen has said that last season’s opening BKT United Rugby Championship weekend loss to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":634746,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-634745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634745","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=634745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/634746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}