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Hugo Keenan to make long-awaited return as Leinster recall 5 Ireland stars

Hugo Keenan of Leinster before the United Rugby Championship match between Connacht and Leinster at Dexcom Stadium in Galway. (Photo By Sam Barnes/Sportsfile via Getty Images)
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Hugo Keenan is set to play his first match since scoring the series-winning try for the British and Irish Lions against Australia in August when Leinster face United Rugby Championship leaders Glasgow Warriors on Saturday.

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The full-back had been sidelined with a hip injury for the first half of the season, before a fractured thumb prevented him from taking part in Ireland’s Guinness Six Nations campaign.

He will start at Scotstoun in a squad that features five players who represented Andy Farrell’s Ireland over the past six weeks. Of those five, hooker Ronan Kelleher, prop Thomas Clarkson, flanker Jack Conan and fly-half Sam Prendergast will all start, while Ciaran Frawley will feature from the bench.

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There is a further sprinkling of Ireland internationals across the squad who did not feature in the Six Nations, while seasoned internationals RG Snyman and Rieko Ioane are both in the XV.

Glasgow have also opted to rest a large bulk of their Scotland stars who featured heavily during the Six Nations, with Franco Smith opting to hand out a debut to 20-year-old Johnny Ventisei in the midfield.

Fixture
United Rugby Championship
Glasgow
38 - 17
Full-time
Leinster
All Stats and Data

Glasgow Warriors XV: 1 Patrick Schickerling (20), 2 Gregor Hiddleston (40), 3 Fin Richardson (12), 4 Alex Craig (14), 5 Alex Samuel (48), 6 Euan Ferrie (50), 7 Sione Vailanu (37), 8 Macenzzie Duncan (11), 9 George Horne (151), 10 Dan Lancaster (14), 11 Ollie Smith (58), 12 Stafford McDowall (c) (109), 13 Johnny Ventisei (0), 14 Kyle Rowe (47), 15 Josh McKay (73)
Replacements: 16 Seb Stephen (12), 17 Rory Sutherland (21), 18 Sam Talakai (35), 19 Jare Oguntibeju (16), 20 Ally Miller (44), 21 Angus Fraser (25), 22 Jack Oliver (3), 23 Adam Hastings (83)

Leinster XV: 1 Alex Usanov (3), 2 Rónan Kelleher (87), 3 Thomas Clarkson (69), 4 RG Snyman (30), 5 Brian Deeny (47), 6 Jack Conan (171), 7 Will Connors (63), 8 James Culhane (23), 9 Luke McGrath (248) (c), 10 Sam Prendergast (43), 11 Jimmy O’Brien (111), 12 Robbie Henshaw (113), 13 Rieko Ioane (8), 14 Joshua Kenny (10), 15 Hugo Keenan (76)
Replacements: 16 John McKee (42), 17 Jerry Cahir (8), 18 Rabah Slimani (30), 19 Conor O’Tighearnaigh (7), 20 Max Deegan (150), 21 Scott Penny (99), 22 Fintan Gunne (27), 23 Ciarán Frawley (115)

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Eric Elwood 182 days ago

Poor enough showing I thought. Like the Northampton match doing several Nienaber style sprints in defense and leaving huge doglegs.

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cnw 2 hours ago
Rugby's Greatest Rivalry - The stats showcase South Africa's lethal adaptability

I think the issue is much more simple than this. As you know I did not buy into the narrative that Razor was an incompetant coach. I saw real development in terms of clinical structured play. For me the players were struggling with the regimentation needed to play Black Crusader rugby and it imploded in Wellington. London however was an unfortunate confluence of injuries to our key play makers - Roigard and BB - and another brain explosion by Taylor. The failure also to develop a 6-2 bench compounded an energy deficit in the second half. DR threw out the Black Crusader regimentation in favour of his Chiefs, Glasgow and Steelers formula. It has sparked an attacking prowess we have not seen for years - but it has come at the expense of the type of structured % play that Razor was building and brought with it a high error rate. When faced with a well oiled machine like the Boks, who have been fine tuning their systems for several years, the inevitable lack of coherency is exposed. And if we reflect on the losses to Boks on this tour, we can pinpoint “moments” in the game where the Boks systems overwhelmed the ABs. So, one of the key issues with the GVF analysis is that it underestimates the signficance of context of the games and thus overestimates the real difference between the coaches and the players.

Ps to put some stats around this, I have analysed the performance efficiency of the Boks and the ABs for all the NC and GR games. This is based on an aggregate of point per pass / carry and tackle. The AB average is 4.7 and never got higher than 5.8 while the Boks averaged at 6.7 and maxed out at 8.2 in Baltimore. This supports a strong inference that the Boks systems are just inherently more efficient at this time while the ABs are still coming to grips with their new systems. It is not coincidental that the Boks lost with their lowest performance ratio for the tour at 6.4.



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