Leo Cullen: Leinster will do what's best for James Ryan

Leinster won't be in any hurry to get James Ryan back on the pitch with Leo Cullen promising to do "what’s best for him".

The 25-year-old Ireland second row is out of action with concussion following a head-on-head collision with England’s Charlie Ewels, who was sent off for the challenge during the Six Nations match at Twickenham.

Ryan, who has won 43 caps since making his debut in 2017, has a history of head injuries and last November was sent to see an 'independent concussion consultant" in line with World Rugby protocols.

The latest incident brought his head injury assessments to seven in a 15-month period.

Leinster have a busy period coming up as the domestic and European season enters the business end but Cullen vowed that wouldn’t play any part in Ryan’s return-to-play schedule.

"James will be seen by the people he has seen before," the Leinster head coach told RTÉ Sport.

"The bang, when Charlie Ewels shoots out of the line, that’s the type of tackle that World Rugby are trying to get rid of.

"It’s still probably the biggest challenge we have in the game in terms of trying to change some of the player behaviour as a defender in particular.

"It was an unlucky bang that he gets in the game, slightly different to some of the bangs he’s had before so it’s trying to differentiate that as well.

"[We] leave it up to the experts as well so there is a lot of data that we are trying to gather.

"We talked about the gumshields that we wear now in terms of monitoring that training load.

"And for someone like James, who has had some head knocks, that does give some level of comfort and growing everyone’s understanding but ultimately we just want to do what’s best by James.

"He’ll get sent to the best people that we can send him to,