Leo looks to drain resurgent Bath

LIKE most professionals, Leo Cullen is prepared to make all sorts of sacrifices to play the game he loves but he draws the line at pasta for breakfast.

Leinster have long grown accustomed to playing after the sun goes down but tomorrow’s 12.45pm kick-off at Bath’s Recreation Ground demands a very different schedule of players for whom routine can be everything.

Bath is a cultured and lively university town but the pre-lunchtime Heineken Cup start against the English Premiership side will be countered by a rewinding of the body clock back a number of hours so lights out for Cullen tonight may be as early as ten o’clock.

There will be fewer accommodations made at breakfast where the modern pre-match meal of choice for sportspeople looks like being shunned in favour of a spread more in keeping with the average early riser on Sunday.

“Because it’s that early I will probably have porridge and then scrambled eggs on toast or something like that,” he laughed.

“I would struggle with the pasta. Maybe with a bit of chicken thrown in there.”

Other aspects to tomorrow’s Pool 3 encounter will be more familiar.

Seven years ago, Cullen was part of Declan Kidney’s Leinster team when they snatched a late win at The Rec courtesy of a late David Holwell charge and he sat on the bench the following season when Leicester pinched a similar victory.

The cramped dressing rooms, the stunning backdrop of Georgian architecture and the leaden underfoot conditions caused by the adjacent River Avon: none of it will come as a shock to Cullen who will also get to touch base with some old friends.

Lewis Moody, Dan Hipkiss and Sam Vesty all soldiered alongside him with the Tigers during his two-year stint in England but only Hipkiss starts tomorrow. Vesty has been named on the bench while Moody is a long-term absentee after shoulder surgery.

“He is a pretty inspirational guy in just the way he plays,” Cullen explained.

“He has so little regard for his own body and his biggest attribute as a player has probably been a bit of a downfall for him as well in the fact that he has been plagued by injuries the last four or five years.

“He is a loss because he pours his heart into the way he plays and he is pretty abrasive and aggressive when he is on the field.”

Abrasive. Aggressive. Words that could be attached to most of what is a big and physical Bath pack and 15 in general and ones that bring to mind another familiar face in the former Ulster lock Ryan Caldwell.

A two-times capped Ireland international, Caldwell makes no secret of the fact that he sees this game as the perfect stage from which to audition for a return to an international scene which he briefly graced against Canada and the USA in 2009.

With Donncha O’Callaghan again warming the bench for Munster’s visit to Parc Y Scarlets today, the meeting of Cullen and Caldwell inherits a significance beyond the confines of the European Cup.

“Caldy is a good, loud guy and a talented player,” said Cullen who has long been third-choice lock for Ireland.

“It didn’t really go his way at Ulster at the end of his time there but he has always been a player with a massive ability.

“Sometimes that’s all that some guys need is to string a run of games together and he is an abrasive, in-your-face character the way he plays as well so we are prepped for him and his physical edge.”

Caldwell may have settled well but he was one of nine recruits during the summer and Bath’s attempt to gel a new side of signings and academy products hasn’t been helped by a litany of injuries which has contributed to a poor first half to the season.

Leinster may have lost the away legs of these back-to-backs in three of the last four seasons but their overall win ratio in such double headers stands at an impressive 66% and they haven’t earned that by losing games to sides like Bath.

It looks like Cullen will be celebrating over dinner, which may or may not involve pasta.