Garry Ringrose? Joey Carbery? Josh van der Flier? Dan Leavy? Luke McGrath? Rory O'Loughlin? Adam Byrne? Ross Byrne? All these names we have seen do well for Leinster this season have all gotten competitive game time in the British & Irish Cup.
Many have denounced the competition, and with good reason from an overall standpoint, but with a purely Leinster Rugby provincial hat (excluding the AIL clubs who of course would rather the A team didn't exist!) it has helped a lot as far as we're concerned here at Harpin Manor, and their matches at Donnybrook are always an entertaining addition to the season schedule.
We are well used to getting out of our pool at very least, but this season we're not having everything our own way. Defeats away to our Scarlets counterparts as well as one in Donnybrook in October to Friday night's opponents Nottingham have left us with a bit of work to do to reach the last eight.
The tournament format is similar to the Champions Cup in that there are five pools and the winners going through along with the three best runners-up. The expulsion of London Welsh due to their financial woes has added a wrinkle to that structure, and I can't find any official info but I'm guessing they won't take a runner-up from the three-team pool they leave behind.
But going by the current state of the pools, I would assume that anything short of two wins won't be enough for us, and try bonus points certainly won't hurt either.
Unfortunately, they play at exactly the same time as the senior team on Friday night. So if you want to keep up with the score throughout as you watch the events unfold at the RDS, we recommend to go to the Nottingham club Twitter page and click "turn on mobile notifications" and throughout the match you will get updates.
One note about the Nottingham side...once more it includes former Leinster player Jordan Coghlan who was very impressive for the Championship outfit when they played here in October.
Best of luck to the lads!!! #COTAT
Leinster ‘A’ matchday squad v Nottingham : 15. Billy Dardis 14. Hugo Keenan 13. Jimmy O’Brien 12. Tom Daly 11. Barry Daly 10. Cathal Marsh 9. Nick McCarthy
1. Andrew Porter 2. Bryan Byrne 3. Oisín Heffernan 4. David O’Connor 5. Ian Nagle 6. Peadar Timmins CAPTAIN 7. Dominic Ryan 8. Max Deegan
Replacements 16. Sean McNulty 17. Ed Byrne 18. Jeremy Loughman 19. Oisín Dowling 20. Ciaran Frawley 21. Jack Power 22. Jordan Larmour
Nottingham : 15) James Stephenson 14) Joe Cobden 13) Oli Evans 12) Vili Hakalo 11) Calum Hall 10) Sam Oliver 9) Darryl Veenendaal
1) Kieran Davies 2) TJ Harris 3) Ben Hooper 4) Toby Freeman 5) Morgan Eames 6) Ben Morris (C) 7) Jordan Coghlan 8) Shane Buckley
Replacements: 16) Ben Brownlie 17) Tom West 18) Tom Heard 19) Josh Poullet 20) Matt Everard 21) Jacob Nash 22) Lawrence Rayner
Our Leinster v Montpellier preview will post Friday lunchtime.
