When you owe the bank €1000, you’ve got a problem. When you owe the bank €100,000,000, they’ve got a problem.

I love that phrase. It encapsulates the balance of power between two states of being quite perfectly, I think. If you’re the bank, it’s better to keep your borrowers in line because, if things get out of hand, you’ll have more debt out there than you can handle.

It’s a phrase that, to me, resonates with the challenges of managing a squad of professional rugby players in a competitive environment. You want to have depth, obviously – like a bank wants to have borrowers – but too much depth and you start to run into problems.

I was reminded of this phrase when I was compiling a depth chart for the Irish back row over the last few days in the aftermath of Dan Leavy’s positive injury news.

Have a look at the current Leinster back-row depth chart when it comes to players currently on senior deals.

Name	Age	Position	Leinster Caps	Ireland Caps
Jack Conan	27	#8/#6	89	17
Will Connors	23	#7/#6	13	0
Max Deegan	23	#8/#6	59	1
Caelan Doris	21	#8/#6	28	1
Dan Leavy	25	#7/#6	63	11
Josh Murphy	24	#6/#4	30	0
Scott Penny	20	#7	11	0
Rhys Ruddock	29	#6/#4	168	26
Josh Van Der Flier	26	#7	79	25

This doesn’t include their current academy players or who they’ll be taking in this season. It’s a bit of a headache, isn’t it? Like, it’s a good headache to have in one way because you’ve got a lot of quality there in almost every position you’d look to fill but with Jack Conan and Dan Leavy returning to full fitness in the short and medium-term, it has the potential to become a bit of a selection migraine for Leinster.

You’ve got nine players on senior deals and the oldest of them is 29. Four of those players have over 10 Irish caps, only two players have less than 30 caps and seven of this group of back-rows are in active contention for Irish selection as of February 2020. Josh Van Der Flier, Jack Conan and Dan Leavy are all players that, when fit, would be in active contention for matchday Ireland shirts. Caelan Doris and Max Deegan are floating around that conversation too as of late and it’s not outside of the realms of possibility that Rhys Ruddock could make a run back towards test consideration with a fair wind.

The other two players – Josh Murphy and Scott Penny – certainly have the skillset for test rugby but aren’t in the conversation currently. You’d think that’s only a matter of time, though.

If you’re involved with Leinster, you see the potential problem here.

If it’s “the other provinces are going to be sniffing around these guys” then you’re right, but that’s only half the story.

The oldest player on this list – Rhys Ruddock – is currently their vice-captain and could easily have four seasons left in him at the top level. Dan Leavy, if he returns from injury properly, is a guy with Test Lion ability. Josh Van Der Flier fits into the same bracket. Jack Conan is coming into his peak as a player and could easily start for Ireland against England if he was fit. It won’t be long until Caelan Doris is spoken about in the same bracket and I’d say Max Deegan is only a small bit behind him.

Leinster will, rightly, be saying to the guys further down the depth chart to those players that they’ll get a fair rake of minutes during the PRO14 and, with the game being what it is these days, you’ll get a fair bit of time if there are a few injuries with Will Connors being a great example.

The problem for these players – Scott Penny, Josh Murphy and even Connors himself – isn’t who’s ahead of them, it’s who is coming up behind them.

If you’re Scott Penny, for example, you could probably buy a coach telling you that you might some Cat 3 PRO14 minutes next season behind Connors, Leavy or Van Der Flier and maybe a few rotation minutes in the Interpros. You’d back yourself to perform in those minutes too and maybe make the step up to key PRO14 games or Champions Cup games if you get a big string of luck with injury further up the depth chart.

But if you’re Scott Penny, your problem isn’t Josh Van Der Flier, Dan Leavy or Will Connors, it’s someone like Mark Hernan – the 6’2″ outgoing St. Michael’s captain from 2019 and current starting #7 for the Irish u20s – and whatever other top-end young athletes that are currently lurking in the Leinster private school system that we don’t know about yet.

Leinster can’t put anything in stone for Penny or Murphy about next season right now because pro-sport doesn’t work that way. In as much as Leinster are rightly worried about other provinces – and English/French teams – sniffing around their depth players, the players themselves have to be keeping an eye on the same “conveyor belt” that rolled them out. The next hot young prospect is only ever a year away, especially in a traditionally strong position as the back row. For some of the current players in that Leinster squad, that means that you’re only a year away from being lost in the shuffle as a professional trainer.

To Leinster coaches and fans, depth is good and must be maintained. However, having too much depth combined with a consistently high-quality youth intake can put real pressure on player retention down the depth chart. For most clubs, this isn’t even that much of an issue but Leinster are in a unique position that only the likes of the Crusaders can relate to.

Essentially, the equation is like this; if Player X is good enough to potentially start Champions Cup level games but he’s behind three players in their mid-twenties in his preferred position (who are also currently in Irish contention and, obviously, good enough to start those games right now), how long can you reasonably keep Player X ticking along with the idea that he can reasonably expect to compete with relatively young players who might be on central contracts?

Leinster can be loyal to these players up to a point but, ultimately, if a 19-year-old young lad who looks like he could be the next Richie McCaw pops out of St. Michael’s next summer, he’ll get the James Ryan treatment and rightly so. Then Player X can look forward to a lot of A Rugby, trips to Newport in February and trying to look like, say, Hamish Watson in training when Leinster play Edinburgh in a knockout game.

David Nucifora is the devil incarnate to Leinster fans because he, to them, is the evil man who spirits away their players to other provinces but what you’re really seeing is the gift and curse of having a youth system as prolific as the Dublin private schools. You will produce players – lots of them – and they’ll be good, too, but the reality of there only being so many minutes to go around in an environment where everyone wants to play for Ireland will bite sooner or later in one area of the team or another.

Nobody with designs of being a top player wants to be the guy who’s 30 years of age with 50 provincial caps, a handful of bench minutes in the Champions Cup, a few league medals you watched being won by other players from the stands, 0 test caps and having to endure the Scott Penny of 2025 eating up your minutes in a contract year. The one thing that every player learns eventually is that time is your enemy and blind loyalty to a club when you’re behind three Irish internationals in one position is for fans and marks who like free training gear.

That won’t be me, thinks the 20-year-old.

That probably won’t be me, thinks the 25-year-old.

That is me, thinks the 29-year-old.

And if you think “that’s good enough for me” then, believe me, your province is already trying to replace you.

Tick tock.