Athy’s Joey Carbery strongly linked with return to Leinster

Joey Carbery has been strongly linked with a return to Leinster after Head Coach Leo Cullen confirmed negotiations have begun in an effort to bring the Athy man back to his home province.

“Yeah, we’ve had some conversations with Joey. That’ll play out over the next little while,” Cullen confirmed. 

Leinster are clearly wasting very little time in replacing Ciarán Frawley after it was announced last week that the Dubliner would be making the switch to Connacht at the end of the season. 

30-year-old Carbery is in the second of a two-year deal in the French Top 14 with Bordeaux-Bègles, with whom he won the Investec Champions Cup in his first season. 

The Athy man made the move to France following a six-year spell at Munster, the highlight of which came in 2023 when the province captured the BTK United Rugby Championship. 

Carbery came through the Leinster Academy and spent two years in the senior squad, winning the Champions Cup in 2018 before departing for Munster. 

That transfer still sticks in the craw of Cullen, who said of Carbery: "He’s a Leinster person first and foremost, came through the pathways. I don’t think it’s a great secret I wasn’t a big fan of how that played out at the time and I wouldn’t have blamed Joey in any sense."

Cullen continued: “It was a long time ago. It’s in the past. Listen, we move forward. 

"A lot of things have happened since then, but if you think of Joey’s last season with us, Leinster won the double, so he was obviously doing something all right that season anyway.

“The experience he has comes into play. We’ll see how it plays out, nothing to be confirmed yet anyway.”