LEO CULLEN has named his Leinster Rugby side to face the DHL Stormers at DHL Stadium on Saturday.
Cullen has heavily rotated the squad from the team that lost to the Cell C Sharks in Durban last week.
The team is as follows:
Front Row: Ed Byrne ,John McKee, Thomas Clarkson
Second Row: Brian Deeny, Josh Murphy
Backrow: Alex Soroka, Scott Penny ,Rhys Ruddock cap
Half backs: Cormac Foley (scrumhalf) Ciarán Frawley(outhalf)
Centers: Jamie Osborne, Rory O’Loughlin
Wingers: Rob Russell, Adam Byrne
Fullback: Max O’Reilly
Replacements: Lee Barro, Michael Milne,Vakh Abdaladze,Jack Dunne, Seán O’Brien,Nick McCarthy,Harry Byrne,Martin Moloney
Referee – C Evans (WRU)
💪 | Here is your #LeinsterRugby team to take on @THESTORMERS in Cape Town tomorrow evening. 👇
A welcome return to the matchday squad for @michaelmilne7! 🙌#STOvLEI #URC pic.twitter.com/32tpAdLAEU— Leinster Rugby (@leinsterrugby) April 29, 2022
This week the Leinster boss lept to the defence of his rotated squad and explained the selections.
“I understand that if you’re sitting in their shoes,” said Cullen,
“But there’s lots of different things going on. In terms of the season it’s such an unusual dynamic and we debated about it a long time ago once they changed this format, adding three extra play-off games in two tournaments.
“If you get knocked out by Connacht, this trip becomes very, very different for us. But because we’re through to Europe and we have a bit of a gap, you want to reward the players who got us through the Six Nations with another trip and see how they go, and build the experience, invest in the future and all that good stuff that we take a lot of pride in.
“But for the South African media or broadcaster, yeah maybe they want the star names.
“The way the system works you can only squeeze so much out of our players and our players are our assets at the end of the day, aren’t they?
“If you have your November internationals, your Six Nations internationals and your summer tour, there's X amount of internationals, so how many more games are you going to get out of them?
The game will take place on Saturday 30th April at 18:15
