Modest Byrne kicks on and lays a few ghosts to rest

• Published date: 15 April 2024
• Author: GERRY THORNLEY
• Publication title: Irish Times (Dublin, Ireland)

Rugby Correspondent

Leinster’s Ross Byrne wouldn’t have been alone in his desire to lay a few ghosts to rest almost 11 months on from last May’s heartbreaking final against La Rochelle.

As much as anyone, he did so with a polished all-round performance which resolved any lingering debate about who should be the boss at the helm.

Byrne pulled the strings confidently, opting when to launch targets flat to the line or picking when to pull the trigger.

His delayed pass for Josh van der Flier’s carry in the build-up to putting width on the ball for Dan Sheehan’s try was a case in point, so too when taking Caelan Doris’s pullback and popping the ball virtually one-handed in setting up James Lowe for the breakthrough score.

“I was just trying to get it out of my hands without getting melted,” he maintained afterwards with both typical modesty and dryness, having been “melted” a couple of phases previously.

“It’s just trying to do my job, which is trying to navigate the team around the pitch. Just get back in and do my job as best you can. You probably don’t have too much time to think. You just trust your instinct and, hopefully, it comes off.”

Leinster sprinted out of the blocks with three tries inside the first dozen minutes last May, all scored in the right corner, and Byrne narrowly missed two of the three touchline conversions.

Here, despite the swirling breeze, he landed three first-half penalties from a Byrne triangle circa 46/47m out to the left of the posts and also his first three conversions, including two from each touchline, for a 15-point haul.

“They’re very important moments. It was pretty tricky all right. We were warming up...