Leinster head coach Leo Cullen has rejected Tony Ward's claims that he 'disrespected' the history of the Munster-Leinster rivalry by fielding such a weakened side at Thomond Park.
On Christmas Eve, Ward wrote in his Irish Independent column that Cullen's team selection, which saw 10 changes from the side which demolished Northampton a week prior, 'smacked of disrespect' towards the fixture's storied history.
Despite losing by a rather flattering scoreline of 29-17 to their table-topping neighbours, Cullen told Leinster's press conference on Tuesday that he felt the 15 he selected were good enough to achieve victory at Thomond Park.
It’s a difficult one, you’d like to be able to say what selections are disrespectful in terms of individual players, until you had those conversations it’s very hard to comment.
We thought we had a strong enough team to go out and win the game.
The IRFU's player welfare programme saw Cullen axe internationals Jack McGrath, Devin Toner, Josh van der Flier, Sean O’Brien, Jamie Heaslip, and Garry Ringrose from his starting lineup, but Cullen was quick to remind Ward and fellow detractors that it was injuries at half-back and out wide which saw his side decimated to such an extent in the backs.
You have to have the realisation that we’ve had a number of injuries in our back-line in particular. Ross Byrne has stepped in really well, he’s an academy kid playing at 10, he started the year in the academy the three senior 10s we have are all injured at the moment.
It’s a huge step up for the guy, but that’s what we had available and I think Ross has done really well in the games that we’ve had.
We were limited in what we can do in some of our backs, it’s well documented the likes of Dave Kearney, Fergus McFadden, Rob Kearney, Joey Carbery, there’s a whole host of guys I can list off that are unavailable even Adam Byrne was due to be involved but he cried off sick during the week, there are a lot of guys missing.
You’ve got to try manage guys with the national player welfare, you can only play guys in so many minutes so it’s not like we can keep rolling out the same guys, life would be a lot easier if we could but that’s not the situation unfortunately.
Johnny Sexton and Rob Kearney returned to training this week, and a number of experienced Leinster players are expected to return to Cullen's side for this weekend's visit of Ulster at the RDS.
[Darren Cleary, 98FM]
