So Lein­ster stroll into another Cham­pi­ons Cup semi-final, a sixth in a row after a rous­ing win over a depleted Sale Sharks last week­end.

It’s busi­ness as usual for Leo Cul­len’s side as they look to finally land that elu­sive fifth star with a home semi-final against Toulon. There weren’t too many head­lines from the game, as a stodgy first half was fol­lowed by a much more famil­iar attack­ing dis­play from Lein­ster.

At the heart of it was Harry Byrne. No one would have thought 12 months ago that the younger Byrne would be the man lead­ing Lein­ster in Europe, espe­cially while exiled to Bris­tol to find some minutes, as well as the qual­ity Sam Pren­der­gast was show­ing.

However now, for the first time since break­ing into first-team rugby, Pren­der­gast is on the out­side look­ing in at both Lein­ster and Ire­land and he was the one player many thought would never be in that situ­ation.

We’ve rarely, if ever, had a player as hyped as Pren­der­gast. From burst­ing onto our screens on a Fri­day night in Col­wyn Bay, play­ing for Ire­land U20 against Wales in game one en route to a Grand Slam, Pren­der­gast stole the show as he showed his passing range, both long and short, for both of James Nich­olson’s tries in a 44-27 win.

It was the start of a great year for Pren­der­gast, and for Ire­land as a whole. 2023 will ulti­mately be remembered as the one that got away in Paris but, on the whole, not many coun­tries the size of Ire­land can boast the dom­in­ance it had at the time. With Grand Slams in both the men’s and junior Six Nations, the young Irish went fur­ther in their World Cham­pi­on­ships, reach­ing the final, where they lost to France.

It was a not­able high for rugby in Ire­land in the pro­fes­sional era, and Pren­der­gast was a focal point of it. From rely­ing on Johnny Sex­ton for over a dec­ade, one legend was going, and his suc­cessor was there for the seam­less trans­ition.

It star­ted that way again once Pren­der­gast had made his Ire­land debut in Novem­ber 2024. After a dis­ap­point­ing start to the autumn Nations Series, and a stag­nant attack, Pren­der­gast came in for Jack Crow­ley, who had led Ire­land to a Six Nations title earlier that year, and things star­ted to click.

That momentum rolled on into the Six Nations, as Pren­der­gast was at the heart of wins over Eng­land, Scot­land and Wales, inflict­ing Eng­land’s only loss of 2025.

Then came the France game, the first in his short career when Pren­der­gast truly had to chase a game — and the cracks began to show. While many coun­tries would get behind a young­ster, Pren­der­gast’s poor dis­play would give ammo to the Crow­ley side of the ‘Jack vs Sam’ debate, which was brew­ing in the back­ground the whole time.

Throughout Pren­der­gast’s rise, there’s been an air in some online circles wish­ing for his down­fall. Whether it’s the con­fid­ent, privately-edu­cated Lein­ster boy talk­ing about ‘horse­play’ in a pro­mo­tional video for the U20s World Cham­pi­on­ships, or how everything seemed to come just too easy for him for some people’s lik­ing, oth­ers just felt Crow­ley was truly hard done by and that this Pren­der­gast kid was just a new shiny toy.

The online ridicule began to reach a point we’d never seen in rugby, where videos of Pren­der­gast’s mis­takes were going viral and accounts would try to blame Pren­der­gast for any­thing that went against Lein­ster and Ire­land.

Even when he does do well, like last Novem­ber in Ire­land’s win over the Walla­bies where Pren­der­gast was at the heart of an imper­i­ous first half for Andy Far­rell’s side, his defend­ing would still be the only point of con­ver­sa­tion for his detract­ors after­wards.

It would be impossible for that level of pres­sure and the astro­nom­ical level of neg­at­iv­ity not to have an effect, and Pren­der­gast now seems to be play­ing with none of the con­fid­ence he had just over 12 months ago.

Sub-par show­ings in Paris and against Italy, as well as Crow­ley step­ping up to help steer Ire­land to the Triple Crown, has put the Jack vs

Sam debate on ice for now at national level, and the lack of con­fid­ence has crept into Pren­der­gast’s club game at Lein­ster.

The province’s attack has been stale this sea­son; they are not romp­ing through the URC and Europe like they usu­ally do, and it is seem­ingly of their own doing as they haven’t been able to put teams away that they ought to be put­ting away.

In the two games com­ing out of the Six Nations, Pren­der­gast star­ted in Lein­ster’s thrash­ing at Glas­gow and then came on at full­back agains Scar­lets.

It now looks as though he’s lost the No10 jer­sey full-time to Harry Byrne, and even his spot in the 23 to Ciarán Fraw­ley.

Byrne has taken this sea­son by storm, and Fraw­ley’s ver­sat­il­ity, though a hindrance to his stance in the Ire­land first 15, makes him near undrop­pable from a match­day 23 for a team look­ing to go far in Europe.

Now, a team where Pren­der­gast once had the keys, they don’t seem to be work­ing.

So, what’s the solu­tion? Well, as Dan Big­gar said on the Rugby Pod last week, Prendergast can look at his team­mate Byrne for an example on how to find a path back.

Byrne went off to Bris­tol last sea­son, and it was a move that helped him grow in every aspect. It was the first time he moved out of Dub­lin, moved away from his fam­ily, and, as he would pro­fess, it did him the world of good.

He worked with a bril­liant coach in Pat Lam and reg­u­lar minutes and a new lease on life gave him the emo­tional free­dom to come back to Lein­ster a con­fid­ent man.

So, why not let Pren­der­gast loose in France, as Big­gar sug­ges­ted, or in Eng­land and get him out of the lime­light for a bit, even for six weeks? The best thing for Pren­der­gast’s devel­op­ment is to have the spot­light off him, whether that’s at Lein­ster or abroad.

Let him work away and develop without the weight of a nation’s expect­a­tions on his shoulders.

Even a tem­por­ary return to his Under 20s coach Richie Murphy at Ulster could do the world of good. This is a fork in the road moment for Pren­der­gast. Make the wrong decision, and he’s a story of ‘what could’ve been’; make the right one, and this is just a low point in a jour­ney to the top. Time to choose wisely.