Conan wants Leinster to drive for five

By Ciarán Ó Raghallaigh

Jack Conan says Leinster have the hunger, the talent and the coaching ability to dominate Europe for years to come.

The Ireland and Leinster flanker says there’s no chance of the province resting on their laurels just months after they won their fourth European title by beating Racing 92 in Bilbao.

A fourth star was not yet added to their shirt and already they were thinking of the fifth, with senior coach Stuart Lancaster telling Conan to look ahead just days after the historic win in the Basque country.

Leinster and Toulouse are the only teams to have won four European Cups, and now the Irish side are looking to be the first to win five.

Nobody here will say ‘ah we’re grand, we won last year, we’re not bothered this year’,” Conan said. “I spoke to Stuart [Lancaster] after the European final and he said ‘the drive to five starts now’.

“The road to the fifth begins right now, that’s what we’ll look to next, because this is done and dusted. In his head, he’d already flicked the switch and was onto the next one.

“Nobody has won five, and I think we have the squad, the depth, the talent, we have the coaches to do it.

“It might not be this year, but I think it’s such an exciting place to be at the moment, Leinster, it’s going to be hard to stop us over the next few years. With more and more young lads coming through, the talent’s getting better and we know how to win as well, that’s a very dangerous combination.”

Leinster, Leicester, Toulon and Saracens have defended their European title, and to do so again Conan believes the team will have to improve.

Joe Tomane was the only on-field addition during a summer that saw Isa Nacewa, Richardt Strauss, Joey Carbery and Jordi Murphy depart. Felipe Contepomi has replaced Girvan Dempsey in the coaching box and the incoming duo could be key to Leinster’s ability to improve.

If we don’t work on getting better, everyone else is going to pass us by,” he said. “We’ve set the benchmark now for European and domestic rugby.

“There haven’t been massive areas where we weren’t good enough, because of the position we are in. There are fine details and fine margins we can improve on. Our defensive set-ups and some of our attacking play has been the big focus of the last few weeks in pre-season. We will try and improve those. Even though we won more last year, we scored a lot more tries the previous season.

“We’re just trying to revamp our attack shape, make sure it’s always growing, getting better.”

Tomane’s offloading ability is likely to be given more leeway to flourish under Contepomi’s watch, with Conan revealing the side is looking to create new threats in attack.

It goes back to that point of us wanting to be better,” he said.

“Our offloading game was one of the aspects we went away from last year, compared to the year previous, where we were looking to play through the line a lot more and throw more offloads.

“We are trying to work on our decision-making around the offload in the last few weeks and make sure that when we are throwing it, it’s on and we’re not just throwing the ball away. It is the decision-making in those attacking set-ups that is the biggest amount of growth that has to happen.”