{"id":298556,"date":"2025-12-04T12:58:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T12:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/298556\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T12:58:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T12:58:08","slug":"rieko-ioane-after-johnny-sexton-spat-all-black-star-hopes-to-lift-leinster-to-european-glory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/298556\/","title":{"rendered":"Rieko Ioane: After Johnny Sexton spat, All Black star hopes to lift Leinster to European glory"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ioane, of course, will hope to emulate the impact of his long-time All Black centre partner Jordie Barrett, who shone during his spell at Leinster last season. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Barrett scored seven tries in 15 Leinster appearances and controversially started the Champions Cup semi-final loss to Northampton on the bench. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">When asked about Ioane potentially matching Barrett, Leinster hooker Dan Sheehan said: &#8220;They&#8217;re different people, different players. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Jordie was great at being able to almost coach lads and see things from a different perspective because we&#8217;ve a lot of people who have grown up in the same system for the guts of 10 years and haven&#8217;t seen an outside view on things. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;That&#8217;s what RG [Snyman, South Africa international] and Rieko can bring to us, different ideas from different parts of the world and obviously at a top-class level.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Before their last-four exit to the Saints, Leinster lost three successive finals to French opposition (La Rochelle twice and Toulouse). <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ireland hooker Dan Sheehan played in all three and says Leinster are hoping to tap into Ioane&#8217;s big-game experience in Europe this time around. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;He&#8217;s a serious competitor. The things he&#8217;s been able to achieve, the amount of experience he has, that competitive edge he has, if we can tap into that it would be brilliant,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;You&#8217;ve seen over the years, every jersey he&#8217;s pulled on, he&#8217;s represented well and been a proper competitor. We&#8217;re really excited to have him in the environment and looking forward to see what he can add.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ioane, of course, will hope to emulate the impact of his long-time All Black centre partner Jordie Barrett,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298557,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-298556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298556\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}