Leinster to give young guns a run in South Africa, Connacht bring experienced squad on tour

Leinster have left the bulk of their Ireland internationals at home for their two-game United Rugby Championship tour of South Africa.

Just front rows Ronán Kelleher and Andrew Porter, who were both injured during the Six Nations, are included in the 31-man squad that will face the Cell C Sharks and the DHL Stormers over the next two weekends.

Back row Rhys Ruddock will captain the touring party as the URC leaders, ten points clear at the top with three games left, bid to secure a home play-off draw.

Leinster saw off the challenge of Connacht on Saturday to book a place in the quarter-finals of the Heineken Champions Cup, where they will face head coach Leo Cullen's old team Leicester Tigers at Welford Road in three weeks’ time with the exact date and time to be confirmed.

The Sharks are sixth in the table with nine wins from their 15 games, while the Stormers are one place higher having also win nine of their matches.

"Some guys will, I think, need a bit of game time over there and the big thing is the work that has gone into this, it’s a much wider group," said Cullen, who joked about the strains on the Ireland players, prior to naming the squad.

"As we know if you want to stay alive in the two competitions you need a good chunk of guys and Caelan [Doris, sitting beside Cullen] and some of the games were taking it easy in camp during the Six Nations.

"We had some guys with their shoulders to the wheel back in base camp trying to push us up the mountain and carrying the load for all these guys.

"Huge credit goes into that group because they’ve done a fantastic job to get us into the situation that we have that bit of a lead, so it’s important to reward some of those guys with some more games as well.

"Those guys are itching to