It’s time to deliver, warns Leo Cullen as Leinster play for pride

Dave Bristol wouldn’t rank up there with the Vince Lombardis, Connie Macks or John Woodens of American legend, but he did manage to knock around Major League baseball for 30 years as a coach of various stripes and as a manager. 

That isn’t a record to be sniffed at given the volcanic nature and limited lifespan of those whose job it is to commandeer dressing-rooms and the inevitable frustrations that come with inveigling large groups of people to perform in unison in high-pressure environments.

Bristol’s ‘bon mot’ aren’t bandied around as motivational scriptures like those mentioned above, but he did deliver a great line once when, as manager of the San Francisco Giants, he addressed his players ahead of a fixture on the road.

“There will be two buses leaving the hotel for tomorrow night’s game,” he is reputed to have said during his season-and-a-bit spent with the Giants by the Golden Gate. “The 2pm bus will be for those of you who need a little extra work. The empty bus will leave at five.” Leo Cullen could have borrowed that line this week.

Leinster’s latest head coach is just 11 games into his tenure and the work required must seem endless as he faces into the prospect of welcoming the reigning European Champions to the Aviva Stadium for a game that has lost most of its meaning for the hosts. Three defeats in their three Pool 5 games have consigned the three-time champions to the ignominy of playing for pride before Christmas and, though there have been frequent flickers of life from them, the volume of work-ons hasn’t dissipated.

Against Wasps in their opener, a 33-6 defeat followed what was basically an all-systems meltdown, but Cullen and company identified some key issues including intensity and defence and the fruits of their labour were evident the following Saturday in Bath.

Problem there was that their setpiece malfunction torpedoed them second time out. Fast forward to last Sunday in Toulon and this time it was ill-discipline – and Jonathan Sexton’s below-par performance – that did for them.

On an on they go, patching up holes in one area of their game only to catch a draught somewhere else, but one of the constants in that timeline has been their utter inability to construct anything like the sort of attacking game required to thrive at this level. One try in those three games says it all. No team has crossed the whitewash less than the Irish province so far in this European campaign – though half of the twenty sides have played a game less – and Cullen was picked up on that twice this week.

“We tend to force things a little bit because we feel that we are chasing the game so we are just trying to change that mentality a little bit, that we are just able to build our way a little bit back into the game that little bit better,” he said on Thursday.

Rewind to last Sunday and his answer to much the same query was to pinpoint the team’s struggle to impose itself at the breakdown. It is undoubtedly an issue that pulls together many strands, but their lack of incision stands as perhaps the greatest indictment of their efforts right now.

This isn’t an isolated issue. They may stand third in the Guinness PRO12, but six sides have claimed more tries than them and their efforts in Europe the past three seasons have largely chimed with the impression of a side that has lost its ability to hurt opponents.

Take away pools containing Italian representatives – where numbers tend to be blow out of all proportion and in which Leinster haven’t found themselves for over a decade — and Matt O’Connor’s Leinster scored the third most tries in the opening six games in his first season in charge.

Leinster were only joint seventh in that same ranking last year and equal sixth back in 2012/13 when Joe Schmidt was on his last lap in charge. Contrast that with the four years that coughed up three Heineken Cups — third, first, first, first — and the difference is clear.

The inability to perform basic skills has been killing them. With simple errors in abundance they have been unable to build pressure and force cracks in opposition defences, though there has long been the impression that Leinster are less dangerous the longer they have the ball.

Their two tries in their last four outings have been claimed by forwards and that run has seen them fail to score at all in the last 43 minutes against Ulster, 55 against Toulon and 63 against Wasps. Only at The Rec did they do any significant second-half damage with 13 points.

“There have been periods of matches, like in Bath, where we have been in control for more than 20 minutes at a time,” said Isa Nacewa. “We have just got to get better as a team at executing in the final twenty minutes when it matters most. Across the board, we all feel like we are about to do that and, from the leaders’ point of view out on the field, I feel we need to take control in that twenty minutes and start delivering.” The Aviva tonight would be a great place for that.