A well-travelled exile

From Dublin to Toulouse to London, flanker Aidan McCullen has sampled most Heineken Cup cultures. He spoke to Simon Lewis.

BY any stretch of the imagination, Dublin, Toulouse and London are three very different cities, but having lived in each Aidan McCullen has found himself locked into a common thread.

McCullen (29) is set to embark on a Heineken Cup campaign with his third different team in as many seasons following his departure from Leinster to Toulouse and an eye-opening season with the French giants cut short by injury.

That led the blindside flanker to London — Sunbury-on-Thames to be precise — where he is relishing a new chapter of his career with London Irish having fully recovered from knee cartilage surgery at the start of the summer.

New, that is, except for the shared philosophy towards the game that links all three of his clubs.

“Other than the injury, I had an absolutely amazing time over there and got on really well and played some really good rugby as well,” says McCullen of his year at Toulouse.

“It definitely made me a better player. People say the French just go out there and play and that’s the truth. Our training sessions were just to go out and we’d play. We’d train against the second team, just play against them and if the coach had anything to say he’d say it. We’d go out with just a general game-plan, not really set-piece kind of stuff, just general ‘go one way, keep the ball alive,’ that type of thing.”

Moving to free-wheeling Toulouse in the summer of 2005 continued an education in flowing rugby McCullen said had begun in Dublin.

“Leinster would have been a very close team to Toulouse in that respect, as they proved when they beat us last year (in the Heineken quarter-finals). So I had come from that type of philosophy with coaches like Willie Anderson at Leinster. There it was also very much ‘keep the ball alive’, continuity, and that helped me going to Toulouse.

“Now coming out of it, having done it and having had it drilled into my head the whole time, you can’t come away from Toulouse and not be a better player. It was an amazing experience.”

The move to England could have been much harder, McCullen said, had it not been for the fact his new club’s outlook on the game mirrors Toulouse’s.

“London Irish is actually very similar,” said the Drogheda-born forward. “Even before I had decided to come over here I had watched them a few times and I was actually very, very impressed with them and the way they played. They play that type of counter-attacking rugby where it’s always on, look up and play what’s in front of you. You don’t have to kick it out to touch, you don’t have to do that type of thing, you know?

“They play what’s in front and do things off the cuff and that impressed me. So it was good to come here from Toulouse to a team that aspires to the same kind of rugby.”

For a back row player, the different philosophical paths determine the way your entire game is played and McCullen would not have it any other way than the Toulouse credo.

“After that experience you don’t want to be going to a club that’s all ruck and maul, ruck and maul, kick for the corners. You want to actually play because that’s what’s been drilled into your head. That’s the type of player I am, I like getting my hands on the ball.”

For now, McCullen is enjoying simply being on the pitch after a frustrating nine months of injury problems that brought his Toulouse sojourn to an end.

On the wrong end of a heavy tackle in a match against Perpginan last February, McCullen made repeated attempts to return to the fray for Toulouse, only to be laid low by connected injuries.

“It was an impact injury, picked it up in a match in Toulouse. It was an awkward injury, a real NFL injury. I got tackled from the side as I was picking the ball up, a case of bad timing and the trajectory he came at me.

“I did the cartilage, had to get an arthroscopy, just get it cleaned out. That was in the summer so when I arrived over I could get straight into rehab. So I’m only back from that really.”

McCullen has settled in well at Sunbury, having been reunited with former team-mates from his Donnybrook days.

“I played with Bob Casey, Ben Willis at Leinster and Barry Everitt at Lansdowne when I was even younger. The team spirit is great here, it was the first thing I noticed coming over here.

“It was great at Toulouse but this a really tight bunch. They’re good friends as well and there’s a good social aspect where they all go out for lunch and coffee and things. That’s important.”

Nothing would come much better for McCullen than a Heineken Cup victory against Pool 5 rivals and former team-mates Toulouse.

Irish have been given a tall order to get out of their group in only their second appearance in the competition, having been pitted against Toulouse, Ulster and Llanelli Scarlets.

“Any team can be turned over on their day, including Toulouse. They don’t win every game. We got beaten by Bayonne last year, one of the lesser teams, and it was a bit of a shock. So it can be done, they can be turned over there and Leinster of course did it in the quarter-final.

“And having been in the team I know that there are weaknesses there, and frailties that can be exploited as well.”

Something McCullen is also perfectly aware of is the feeling of invincibility that will possess the Toulouse players as the three-time champions take to the field in their first meeting at Stade Ernest Wallon on October 29.

“The way you have to think about it,” the flanker said, “is that Toulouse had won it and won it so often that it became a given that we’d go out and win these competitions.

“That’s the way Toulouse approached a lot of games, that they expected to win. That’s a really, really good mentality to have. A lot of it’s in the head for players – ‘oh no, we’re going to Toulouse’, that type of way. And that’s why there was that expectancy to win, they’d done it so much and been so successful.”

For veteran coach Guy Noves and his players though, McCullen believes the Heineken Cup is not the priority. Instead it is the Top 14, the French championship, and the battle for the Bouclier de Brennus.

“That’s still the holy grail because it’s been a while since they’ve won it. They were very disappointed not to get it last year having been beaten the year before in the semi-final.

“That’s the major thing at the moment, but they have such a good mentality that they expect to pick up the European Cup on the way.”

One would expect that a move to London Irish, while not exactly minnows but far from being one of English rugby’s bigger fish, would see a lowering of expectations. McCullen is having none of that.

“In the past but they seem to have had a shift of focus in the last while, or just with the success that’s brought them to the level that they’re at now. Nothing’s impossible and you can see it in the guys here. There’s a confidence and an expectancy. “We’ve lost a couple of games already this season but the lads have been absolutely devastated and that’s great to see.”