Exeter Chiefs have confirmed the signings of Jack Dunne and Rory O'Loughlin from Leinster while Connacht have announced the arrival of Adam Byrne. As was reported in The Irish Times, the trio will leave the province when their contracts expire at the end of the season.
Former St Michael’s secondrow Dunne, who is English qualified, made his Leinster debut in 2019 but has struggled for game time due to injury and those ahead of him in Leinster’s depth chart. James Ryan, Devin Toner, Ryan Baird, Ross Molony and before his retirement Scott Fardy have all been in competition with Dunne.
Jason Jenkins has been signed from Munster to bolster Leinster’s secondrow stocks while academy player Joe McCarthy has also emerged as a viable option there of late.
Centre O’Loughlin departs with one Irish cap and nearly a century of Leinster appearances to his name. He has a Champions Cup winner’s medal as part of the outfit that took home the European crown in 2018.
Rob Baxter spoke about both players upon the announcement of the signings.
“Jack, as soon as I looked at clips of him impressed me a lot. He’s a big guy, but he’s a big guy who can really move. He’s young, the right age, and everything I saw in the clips I liked. Meeting him here at Sandy Park doing his medical was good. He has had a relatively significant injury in recent times, so if people have been looking to him playing over the last 12 months, he’s not had a huge amount of game time. That said, he’s back now and playing for Leinster, so he coming through things.
“Personally, I can only see an upward performance curve in him. With game time, genuine input and probably a little bit more opportunity to play than he did at Leinster, who have got an awful lot of very good second rows, I think it fits for both sides. We have a slot there, Jack is looking to play more rugby, he’s EQP (English qualified), which obviously helps us and creates opportunities for him here in England as well, so the package has been great and hopefully he is someone who will play a lot of rugby for us.”
Baxter added: “Rory is slightly different. He’s an older guy, but with bags of experience having come through all the levels at Leinster, right up to winning a Heineken Cup with them. That’ the kind of guy we are probably looking for in our back line. He is someone who can add genuine communication, a bit of talk, a bit of heads-up and can see space a little bit, understand where we are, alongside being a very good rugby player.
“We’re kind of looking for different things from the two players, but we believe we have got that with these two guys. They have got good experience, come from a very good environment, where they have been part of a high performing team and training unit, so they tick a lot of boxes for us.
“We have played against Leinster numerous times and you can see the success they have had in both their domestic competition, as well as in Europe. These guys have been in that environment for a long time and they will have learnt a lot, so we’re hopeful we can learn from them and that we can teach them something. Having a combination of the two like that, it should be very successful.”
Leinster wing Byrne has also earned one Ireland cap but will still be eligible to add to those given he is staying in Ireland. He leaves the RDS having scored 24 tries in 64 appearances for Leinster.
