THE INTENSE COMPETIRION for places at the province means he often has to bide his time for playing opportunities, but Leinster’s Scott Penny has insisted the idea of seeking pastures new isn’t something he is currently contemplating.

Since making his professional club debut on 23 November 2018 against Ospreys at the age of 19, Penny has accumulated an impressive haul of 33 tries from 79 senior appearances with Leinster. Yet it wasn’t until a pool stage win over Racing 92 at the Aviva Stadium in late January 2023 that the former St Michael’s College student made his European bow for the Blues and his more recent Champions Cup outing arrived a little under three months later in a quarter-final duel with Leicester Tigers.

Josh van der Flier and Will Connors have often been the preferred options at openside flanker for some of Leinster’s biggest games in both Europe and the United Rugby Championship, but despite finding his chances limited at various stages in a given season, Penny stressed he is happy to remain at his home province for as long as possible.

“At the moment, I am happy. It’s the best club in the world. You’re playing with British & Irish Lions, Springboks, All Blacks, people in the French national team. You’re learning and growing so much as a player,” Penny remarked at a Leinster media briefing earlier this week.

“I want to stay here for the rest of my career, but if I don’t, I’ve learnt so much here that I wouldn’t have learnt at any other club. At this point in time, I’m pretty happy staying here. You never know what is going to happen down the line. The grass isn’t always greener on the other side. You could go into a different system, the training is different.

“You pick up injuries, you pick up niggles. You see it pretty often when lads go to different clubs. It doesn’t always work out the way they wanted it to. I’m happy in my head. I’m sure people think I probably should have left by now.

“In fairness to Leo, he’s very good for rotating the squad. Maybe I haven’t played as much as I wanted this season, but the last few seasons, even when I haven’t been playing in the big games, I’ve been getting loads of other opportunities.”

While his appearances in the 2024/25 season have all been in the URC, Penny has featured in seven of the 10 games that Leinster have played in the competition to date. He is set to line out in the blue jersey for an eighth time this term when Leinster face Ospreys – the team he made his debut against more than six years ago – in Swansea tonight.

Ahead of their visit to Wales, Leinster welcomed back six of Ireland’s Six Nations squad to training this week, five of whom have been named in the starting line-up for today’s game. Nonetheless, the province is still missing a strong contingent of international stars and their absence has led to Penny and a number of others to take on leadership roles within the squad.

“In weeks like these, it’s important lads like me, Max Deegan, Ross Byrne, Luke McGrath, we take charge of these weeks when the internationals are gone. We have Academy guys who have moved up in their first year.

“We have to be the leadership voices teaching them. Helping them through the week. I’m enjoying that role, and it’s important in rugby, but also something that can help later outside rugby as well. For whatever is coming next.”

Whereas it was previously the custom to play a steady number of games at this time of year, the past few seasons has only seen Leinster and the remaining Irish provinces playing fixtures during rest weeks in the Six Nations calendar.

For the third campaign in succession, Leinster will only have two competitive games in the middle of this international window (they are also set to take on Cardiff at the Aviva Stadium on 1 March).

Despite admitting an element of frustration at having such long spells in between games – Leinster last saw competitive action against Stormers on 25 January – Penny can also see a benefit to the way the season is currently scheduled in the spring.

“It’s about three years now since they introduced the break. It can be frustrating. There are opportunities for lads to play AIL if they want. When we’re not playing games, we use training weeks to our advantage to try and improve skills. Those are really good weeks,” Penny added.

“Maybe it’s something outside rugby, leadership skills you want to acquire. It can be frustrating not having games, but there are chances to develop other aspects of your life and sport.”

Daire Walsh