RUDDOCK RELIES ON A STING IN THE TALE

RHYS RUDDOCK insists Wasps’ demolition of reigning Champions Cup holders Toulon should give Leinster plenty of belief as they prepare to take on the French side twice in a seven-day spell next month, despite their winless start to the campaign. ‘It does show that this group is so competitive, every team is probably going to be capable on their day of beating one another so as disappointing and hard to take as the last two weeks have been, we know that on our day we can beat Toulon, on our day we can beat Wasps, and nd as we proved we were close to beating Bath away from home,’ said the 25-year-old (right). ‘We can definitely do it and we still wholeheartedly believe that, t, I’m not saying we’re in a good place after the weekend, but we’re definitely taking from that game (on Sunday) that these teams are beatable.’ Ruddock admitted that Leinster can have no real complaints following Saturday’s loss to Bath, and will simply have to show an improvement if they are to start picking up points. ‘They were good at holding onto the ball, they played good rugby and put us under pressure in defence,’ he continued. ‘If we do learn from it, flip the page and put in a big performance this week we can start to move forward and start to feel a bit positive about ourselves as a pack again.’ Meanwhile, scrum coach John Fogarty has said despite promising cameo performances from some of the squad’s supporting cast, he is wary of rushing them into first-team places too soon. ‘It is always important to manage them into it,’ he warned. ‘The instinct to just chuck them out there… they are still quite young players. ‘They are very skilful and it is about making sure that they arrive at the right time and show exactly what they can do. ‘We are very cognisant of the fact that they are still fairly early in their development. ‘That’s not saying we won’t expose them through games and help them grow, that needs to be afforded to them but the idea of sending them out on the biggest days of the year right now: you need to be careful with it.’

WALES forward Luke Charteris will join Bath from Racing 92 at the end of the season. The 6ft 9in second-row has 62 international caps and played in all five of Wales’ matches at this year’s World Cup. Charteris made more than 140 appearances for Newport Gwent Dragons earlier in his career before joining Perpignan in 2012, Racing in 2014 and now Bath.