Cullen aims to avoid chasing Pro12 wins

Leo Cullen’s bitter disappointment at Leinster’s failure to make the Pro12 play-offs last season has made the new head coach determined not to lose focus on the league campaign as the Champions Cup pool phase looms large.

Leinster play host to current leaders Scarlets at the RDS tonight before switching attention to European rugby and a pool of death featuring fellow tournament champions Bath, Toulon and Wasps. Yet before concentrating on the visit of Wasps to Dublin a week tomorrow, Cullen wants to avoid the prospect of chasing Pro12 results later in the season.

Matt O’Connor’s side fought a campaign on two fronts last spring as the province reached the Champions Cup semi-final but paid the price with a poor run of post-Christmas league form that left them in fifth place at the end of the regular season, their first absence from the top four since 2003-04.

Cullen has since taken over from O’Connor and is eager to take care of business in the league before thinking about the size of the task facing his side in Europe.

“It’s a tough challenge this year because the big games have come around really, really quickly,” he said. “Because of the challenge presented in the league, that’s again something that we need to be really mindful of because we can’t be in a situation where we were last year trying to chase results later in the season and we were struggling to get into the top four.

“We have just nipped into the top four, whether we stay there, we’re playing a team that’s just won six from six so it’s a huge challenge for us on Friday.” For Cullen the priority is how to successfully balance twin objectives over the course of a season and not sacrifice league form in the chase for European glory, particularly now Champions Cup qualification for the following year is no longer guaranteed.

“We’re always looking for different ways in how we can manage our season but we struggled at times last year.

We went hard at Europe and it had a knock-on effect where we had a disappointing league campaign.

“The challenge for us is to balance the two tournaments. We need to be careful because of the qualification process, we need to make sure we are in a good position in the league and learn lessons from last season.”