Reaction from Rob Kearney of Leinster Rugby who was named today (Monday, 21 May ) as ERC European Player of the Year 2012<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a massively proud moment for me. To be recognised for your performances throughout the season is a dream come true especially when it\u2019s in a European context. While I\u2019m delighted with the recognition, an individual player is powerless without the support of his teammates. So I owe this award to the Leinster squad, to the management and to the all staff at the club.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a huge season for me especially given that I missed out on last year\u2019s Heineken Cup final because of injury and had to watch from the sideline. So this time, I desperately wanted to be a part of it.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo follow in the footsteps of Sean O\u2019Brien as ERC European Player of the Year is really satisfying. Sean was phenomenal last season, and he was one of the main reasons why we won the tournament. <\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, to win the Heineken Cup two years in a row is really special, but the Leinster squad and management are hungry for success and next season we\u2019ll be looking to win it again.<\/p>\n
\u201cNext Sunday, we\u2019ve got the RaboDirect PRO12 final against the Ospreys and that\u2019s going to be huge for us as players as well. Anyone who manages to put 40 points on Munster has to be a really good team, and even if Munster will feel that they didn\u2019t play that well in the semi-final, the Ospreys were impressive.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey will have had two weeks to prepare for Sunday\u2019s final, they will have scouted us pretty well, so we\u2019re expecting a big game from them and we know they\u2019ll be hugely up for winning a trophy.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve reached four finals in two years, but it\u2019s important now that we don\u2019t lose the run of ourselves. We\u2019re constantly striving to improve, and as long as we stay in this place where the desire is there to keep on winning, then thenthenLeinster Rugby will be very strong for the coming years.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were in a position last season to do the double after winning the Heineken Cup, and we were disappointed that we didn\u2019t perform to our potential in the league final against Munster. In fact, we probably played quite poorly, so this time we want to rectify that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Reaction from Rob Kearney of Leinster Rugby who was named today (Monday, 21 May ) as ERC European Player of the Year 2012 \u201cThis is a massively proud moment for me. To be recognised for your performances throughout the season is a dream come true especially when it\u2019s in a European context. While I\u2019m delighted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8628,7382],"class_list":["post-27805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-irish-rugby","tag-kearney","tag-rob"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27805"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27805\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27806,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27805\/revisions\/27806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}