Sam Prendergast: Fly half fired up for Ireland return after retaining URC crown

Ireland fly down to Australia this week, ahead of their matches against Japan and the Wallabies across the incoming fortnight. Andy Farrell's men then finish their Southern Series by taking on the All Blacks at Eden Park, in a bid to re-write the history books and end New Zealand's 52-match unbeaten streak in Auckland.

"It's a pretty special tour to go on, I've never been down there." Prendergast said, after Leinster's URC title retention at Croke Park. "I've never been to Australia or New Zealand, but it's very exciting in terms of the fixtures that are there.

"It's good to get back in [with Ireland]. I feel like a lot of the provinces were playing very well towards the end of the year. Results maybe didn't go certain teams' ways, but there's a lot of lads who were playing really good rugby. I think it's quite an exciting team to be involved in."

Prendergast capped off his season at Leinster with back-to-back URC titles, as the Dubliners defeated the Bulls in a mirror image of last year's finale.

Leinster pulled no punches from a rather one-sided Grand Final, with Prendergast one of five Leinster try scorers from the 36-7 win.

"It's brilliant." Prendergast said at Croke Park, when asked for his immediate thoughts upon the emphatic victory. "I thought the way we played was one of our better performances of the season and I think that's a huge credit to everyone involved that that's the last game of the season.

"I think it's been two years now where we've really rallied towards the end of the season when it's not that easy in terms of our run of fixtures. I thought it was brilliant. I think the most important thing is just with the amount of lads [James Lowe, Luke McGrath] and brilliant characters leaving that it's hugely important to send them off on a good note, because maybe not last year, but years before that it's been tough sending lads off when it's not a winning season.

"It's nice to get a trophy and be able to enjoy each other's company now for the next few days and properly celebrate."

From an individual perspective, Prendergast is certainly gearing back up towards his very best ahead of a Summer in green down in Australia and New Zealand. Whilst the out-half was rather humble about the fine margins of his Player of the Match performance, he enjoyed looking back upon the incredible try-saving moment, when he put his head amongst the boots, to stop the ball going over Leinster's line.

"There was bits I was happy with, I still made loads of errors." Prendergast admitted. "The lads did such a brilliant job in terms of up front, you look at the amount of injuries that are up front and how well all the lads played in terms of scrum, lineout defence, they didn't really give the Bulls much. And how the lads played outside and inside me Jamo [Gibson-Park] as well, the platform I was given, it makes it a lot easier.

"I suppose I was hoping one of the faster lads would be chasing back!" Prendergast added, about his try-saving moment. "It was just the way it happened, that it was a very unnatural situation and we ended up with no one in the backfield and I was just chasing across. I just hung on to the ball, I don't really know how, but yeah, it was a good moment!"

Whilst the United Rugby Championship crown was ample motivation for the Irish side to be at their very best for the Grand Final, Prendergast revealed how the numerous departing players added fuel to the fire. With the likes of James Lowe (Tokyo Sungoliath), Luke McGrath (retiring), Jerry Cahir (Connacht), Reiko Ioane (Blues - sabbatical end) and Rabah Slimani (RC Toulon) all departing Dublin, Prendergast was happy to see his teammates off with another winners medal.

"It's [departing players] a massive factor." He said. "The lads who played today and as well as the lads who haven't, they've all contributed so much to the club. Even like lads like Jerry and Rieko who have only been here a year, Rabah who has only been here a couple of years, and then there's also lads who've been here for loads of time.

"It's a huge driving factor within the squad because I think there's a lot of huge players first of all, great players on the pitch, but also massive characters within the dressing room that are leaving and you just want to be able to celebrate with them."

The 23-year-old revealed how missing out on the Champions Cup Final also lit a personal fire within him for the show-piece match of the league season. Prendergast could only watch on in Bilbao, as Harry Bryne and Ciaran Frawley were the selected fly-halves for the defeat to Bordeaux-Begles.

"I reckon I played a better game today than I did in last year's [URC] final, and that's probably the end goal, isn't it? Prendergast said. "You want to keep progressing as the years go on and as the weeks go on and that's kind of what I'm chasing down.

"There were obviously parts of the season where I probably wasn't too happy with how I was playing and I wasn't getting selected then because of that, which is just the nature of it. But, it's nice to be able to put out on the pitch stuff that I feel like I'm working hard on and getting better at."

To end the season as URC champions, Leinster's campaign has taken a complete u-turn from how it started down in South Africa. The Dubliners began their 2025/26 season with three straight defeats in the land of the Springboks, before losing to arch-rivals Munster upon their home-coming to Croke Park.

"It was probably a very different season to last season in terms of how it started. We started over in South Africa getting thumped by the Stormers and there was a tough run of fixtures, lost a lot of games early in the season." Prendergast added.

"But, I have a lot of good people around me in terms of coaches, players, a lot of the leaders within Leinster and Ireland are very good to listen to, and they would have been a huge help through some of those performances where I wasn't playing the way I wanted to."

The speculation continues around the Leinster coaching staff, with the future of Jacques Nienaber as yet unconfirmed with the Irish province. With plenty of reports linking the two-time Rugby World Cup winning coach back to the Springboks, Prendergast gave his thoughts upon how both Nienaber and his head coach Leo Cullen continue to develop the Leinster project after unwanted set-backs.

"They're always impressive." He said. "They're obviously always impressive in terms of how they're able to [recover from set-backs] it was the same last year [after Northampton - Champions Cup semi-final] , it wasn't a final but it was the same, a setback, and you have to build again and I think they've been excellent at building again.

"How they speak is brilliant. They're both obviously very different, there's also other coaches involved as well who care so much, so much backroom staff that care so much, and I suppose when your coaches care that much, it rubs off on the players and it's just a good squad to be involved in."