Cullen plays it cool ahead of Exiles tie

LEINSTER captain Leo Cullen could hardly be blamed if he was still up in the clouds after his team’s Magners League demolition of Munster at the RDS on Saturday.

However, just like Northampton are fearing a backlash from Munster when the sides meet at Franklin’s Gardens on Saturday next, Leinster are doing their best to guard against any complacency as they prepare for Friday’s Heineken Cup visit of London Irish.

“There’s always that danger,” Cullen accepts. “We’ve just started thinking of London Irish as of this morning. You just have to examine some of their performances to get a realisation of what lies ahead on Friday. They have a lot of powerful runners and are a very strong team physically. They’re really well coached by Toby Booth. They’ve developed some of their own players through the academy and are going to be a right handful.”

Nevertheless, if Leinster perform with the same physicality and use their backs in a manner that undid Munster, they must be in with a great chance of another crucial home victory. Cullen tried hard to play down the importance of the game, aware of overconfidence creeping into their mindset.

Bob Casey, the only Irishman guaranteed his place in the London Irish team on Friday, is such a close friend of Cullen’s that they holidayed together last summer and were room mates during their schooldays at Blackrock College. In fact, he reckons he has played with Casey more than against over the years but it’s not an issue for him.

“You get used to playing against friends over the years,” he maintains. “And I don’t think there’s a massive difference going into the campaign as European champions. I suppose there’s a different pressure from the tag as under achievers that we might have had in the past. Even at the end of last season, we spoke about not being a once-off team and the squad are hungry to move on.

“Even when we started that campaign, we were under a lot of pressure after coming off losing a couple of games in the league and we rode our luck at times. It wasn’t always the prettiest during the group stages. Even in the quarter-final, Harlequins missed a couple of kicks at goal so we could easily have been out there. We flew under the radar a little and that might have helped.

“The Heineken is a very tough competition to win. The standard of the teams gets better every year. The French teams were quiet last season but I’m sure they’ll be coming back stronger than ever. They have probably recruited bigger than anyone.”

From his earliest days at Blackrock College, Leo Cullen has always been regarded as a very special rugby talent. If anything, it’s surprising that he hasn’t figured more often in the green jersey but he is playing at least as well as ever, a point he made graphically at the weekend. No doubt, he was helped by a few seasons at Leicester Tigers and by coming back to a much better scene that was developing nicely in his native place.

“There certainly are a lot more blue flags around the place,” he smiled. “The support has grown massively. The interest in the game has grown massively and that’s the thing I have noticed after being in England for a couple of years. Munster have been successful in Europe over the past number of years and that has had a knock-on effect in the Irish team doing well. People are very passionate about rugby now and that wasn’t always the case before. There’s a wider support base and you’re constantly meeting people who have just taken up supporting rugby and that standard has increased as a result.”

* PETER RICHARDS of London Irish has been banned for one week by the Rugby Football Union following his dismissal for elbowing Sale Sharks’ Neil Briggs in the Guinness Premiership match at Edgeley Park last Friday.