Locked into a three-way shootout as the favorites for this year’s title, Leinster Rugby will be looking to take another step toward a fourth consecutive final appearance. 

Standing in the way this week is an ultra-slick Southwest London set of ballers in the Harlequins.

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Already confirmed as having sold over 60,000 tickets for the occasion, which will take place at the iconic Croke Park, there is a sense of expectation for Leinster to lay down a marker.

Steering away from their easy-on-the-eye attacking gameplan of the past decade plus, Leinster has become a side packed full of backstreet brawlers, more content without the ball than with it. The Irish side has suffocated all in its path this season. 

Taking a lone loss on the road by one point against the Vodacom Bulls in the URC, with what was at best a B team, in the 85th minute, Leinster has been close to impenetrable this season. 

Conceding an average of less than 14 points a match, Leinster has fully immersed itself in Jacques Nienaber’s World Cup-winning mold.

Harlequins, on the other hand, is a beacon to what Leinster was with the maverick that is Marcus Smith pulling the strings at fly-half. 

Across both competitions, an average scoreline is Quins 24 – opponents 22. In short, the Londoners are walking a tightrope this season, while Leinster is winning by an average margin of 14.

Does this mean the Quins don’t have a chance? Certainly not. In truth, this is a free hit for the Quins, who will be unbridled by any sense of pressure and will no doubt take it to their Irish hosts. The question is, can they match Leinster physically, and if so, for how long? 

As England learned earlier this year, when the Irish team (consisting primarily of Leinster players) goes through the gears, the squad is close to unstoppable.

To have a real shot at pulling off the upset, Harlequins will need to keep the ball away from the contact point as much as possible. 

That means mixing in a short passing game to challenge the inside of the blitz defense with a clever short-to-medium kicking game to exploit the space left behind the rapid line speed. 

In this respect, Smith will need to be mindful of Leinster’s dual fullback selection of Hugo Keenan and Jamie Osborne, who likely will be roaming in this space. Thus, he will need to find grass between this pair with winger James Lowe, who is more of an end-of-line jammer than a backfield marshal. The potential for space is there.  

Similar to Toulon against Saracens, Leinster has far more routes to victory than its visitors and rightly is  considered as heavy favorite. Should this play out to script, then Leinster will physically batter Harlequins for the opening 50 minutes before stretching away. 

For this opening period, fly-half Sam Prendergast likely will play a key role in putting his pack in the right areas with his impressive long-range kicking game. 

Aiding the young outhalf in this department are the strong kicking games of Jamison Gibson-Park, Jordie Barrett, Lowe and Osborne.

The bookies are rarely wrong with favorites of this magnitude, and though this group of players hasn’t played together for quite some time, Leinster should have too much. Throw into the mix the ‘hurt’ of Ireland relinquishing its Six Nations title, and we have a sneaky suspicion that Leinster will show more in attack than we have seen to date. Leinster by 15+.

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