'I absolutely love that' - Leinster's Joe McCarthy relishing La Rochelle battle

If Leinster want to feel better about their lineout then they should review La Rochelle's recent struggles in that area.

The rivals face off in round three of the Investec Champions Cup on Sunday afternoon (3.15pm, live on RTÉ Radio 1) and both could do worse than review Luke Littler's World Championship win for darts tips.

Ronan O'Gara said Saturday's win over a callow Toulouse side felt like "defeat", as they needed a penalty with the last kick of the game to claim a 22-19 success.

Chief among their problems was a misfiring lineout operation, with the Top 14 champions stealing three throws in a manner reminiscent of Clermont's success in that area when they lost to Leinster at Aviva Stadium in round two.

The La Rochelle scrum also looked shaky, and the breakdown area was messy across what was a poor spectacle between the last two champions of Europe.

Leinster and La Rochelle have previous.

When they met in this fixture last season, Leinster had lost three of their previous meetings, famously in the 2022 and 2023 finals and in the 2021 semi.

Leo Cullen's side emerged with a confidence-boosting 16-9 success from a rain-lashed Stade Marcel-Deflandre, paving the way to another final appearance, which also included a quarter-final demolition job of the then champions.

Other iterations of Leinster wouldn't have been up for the task, but Joe McCarthy, sin-binned in the first-half, James Ryan and Caelan Doris revelled in the conditions.

"It was real tough conditions and hard to get anything going," recalled Ireland lock McCarthy of the game, in which Jordan Larmour scored the only try.

"We took an opportunity in their 22, there wasn’t many of them.

"We got on top in the set-piece, mainly the lineout. We were good at stopping their maul,