Life beyond the famous five

HEINEKEN CUP POOL ONE:

It says a lot about a man and the impact he has made when his first name, or his nickname, can appear in print in such splendid isolation and a reader doesn’t have to flick through their internal Filofax.

All five of those listed above will be more conspicuous today by their absence rather than their titles, however, as Leinster begin their latest Heineken Cup campaign against the Ospreys in Wales, without five of their most iconic of players and leaders.

Brian O’Driscoll, Leo Cullen and Jonathan Sexton were the three players Joe Schmidt – who has also moved on, of course – met with when he flew over from France to pay Leinster the courtesy of a visit when they were in the market for Michael Cheika’s successor.

Schmidt said again this week he had no intention of cutting his ties with Clermont Auvergne, with whom he had spent three happy years, but then he found himself blown away by the dynamic drive of those three Irishmen and changed tack.

Isa Nacewa and Shane Jennings have been no less central to the success story that has been Leinster rugby this last five seasons with the cult Kiwi lionised by everyone involved with the club long before he returned home in retirement last summer

The flanker, too, has been credited with steeling what had been a previously suspect pack and iffy culture on his return from Leicester Tigers after a two-year stint in the East Midlands alongside men like Cullen and Martin Corry.

All five have missed European fixtures in the past through injury – even Nacewa who last sat out a Heineken fixture back in December of 2008 when Leinster last fielded a team in the tournament without at least three of that five-star collective.

In the 33 ties since Sexton assumed the number 10 shirt from Felipe Contempomi, they have fielded four or all five men on 29 occasions. To be fair, Leinster didn’t exactly fare all that badly on the four occasions in which they were made to, well, make do given they won them all.

Mostly though, they were meeting sides already edging towards the exit door. This evening will be different. Today they will take on an Ospreys side that delights in confounding them and one which still cherishes European ambitions of their own.

“Ospreys are a good team,” says Jamie Heaslip, one of those whose leadership will be of increased worth this campaign. “They’ve been competing, it’s the first time we’ve met them in the Heineken Cup but we’ve met them a lot in the knock-out stages of the Rabo League.

“They’re a team you have to put away, you can’t give them opportunities. We talk about them being a very efficient team and if you make a mistake, any basic error, they’re very good at punishing you.”

Scan the English papers this week and they are, unsurprisingly, expressing doubts about a Leinster team which they believe is in transition: Northampton are being tipped widely to upstage them in the pool three years after the pair met in that unforgettable Cardiff final. The loss of so many alpha males has left them with a bench light on experience for such a formidable journey and few in the camp will need reminding of their travails last season when an injury-plague desiccated their plans for a third title on the trot.

“The group is quite … the way the games are, you can’t really afford not to hit the ground running and not take your chances when they come,” says Heaslip on the lessons learned. “When we lost those back-to-back games (to Clermont) we were just chasing our tail. Losing those back-to-back games made us realise that we couldn’t afford teams easy outs and opportunities. In the away game against Clermont I remember there was a couple of times when he had lineouts in their 22 and then didn’t execute. They were times when we could have won the game and then there were times at home when we gave them so many penalties to just pull away from us and make us chase the game. We realise you can’t do that in Europe.”