Stuart Lancaster: 'I'd love to come back and coach in Ireland'

The imminent goodbyes have snuck up on Lancaster. All the more so now that the loss to Munster last week has shaved a week off the season’s end. This week is it, then

Tue, 16 May, 2023 - 07:00

Brendan O'Brien

Eight months since Leinster announced Stuart Lancaster’s summer departure to Racing 92. Thoughts of leaving Dublin after seven years will have colonised his thoughts for longer again. In short, the province’s senior coach has had an age to process his next chapter.

Life being what it is though, the imminent goodbyes have snuck up on him. All the more so now that the URC semi-final loss to Munster last week has shaved a week off the season’s end. This week is it, then. One more crack at a Champions Cup final – his fourth – and that’s him out the door.

From Leinster and from his digs in Rathmines.

“I don’t know if I’ve told you but I’ve not had a TV. For seven years I’ve never had a TV. So what I do in the evenings, when I’m not watching rugby I guess, (is) I buy books and read books. I’ve had this massive library of books emerge so I was thinking, ‘what the hell am I going to do with all of these books now?’

“I’ve got my favourites and I put them in a bag and some have gone to Leeds, but I’ve still got another 50 books. So every day, in the morning before I go to the gym, I take down five books and put them in the free library. Gradually my book supply has gone so there have been hundreds of books I’ve given away and now the flat is looking pretty empty because there is only a week left.”

Ireland was never on his radar after his RFU contract, due to run up to 2019, was cut short four years early after the failure to exit the pool stages of the World Cup. And he only came over because Kurt McQuilkin left for New Zealand for family reasons.

Some of the current Leinster stars were teenagers when he arrived. He has seen them progress through the academy all the way through to, in some cases, the British and Irish Lions. Kids have become dads and started families of their own.

His influence on the place has been profound, not just in the bricks and mortar of skillsets and systems, but in the blue-sky stuff of leadership development and culture and in the coaching sessions he has held across the province.

The asterisk to all this is the one and only Champions Cup won in that time. It's a slim haul for a squad and a club of Leinster's stature. Saturday will colour his final grade but he is reluctant to let the result define him.

He will tell you that results depend on all sorts of variables outside of his control - a sending off in the first minute, the bounce of a ball, a refereeing decision – so he doesn’t hold to the idea of judging such a major body of work through the prism of one 80 minutes.

As you would expect.

“The last thing I want to do is be consumed by the result. I want to enjoy the occasion, enjoy the week, enjoy what happens at the end, but then look back at a brilliant period in my career, and hopefully (it’s) not the last time I’m back. And I do genuinely mean that. I would like to come back.”

He has made the point before that this relationship has been a two-way street. His spell here, he said on Monday, has made him “a miles better coach” thanks to the exposure he has enjoyed to top-class players, coaches and facilities.

Lancaster wasn’t in Dublin long when he took to writing down lessons learned and he added another few to his list after the loss to Munster three days ago. The pad is bulging now with no less than 189 of these titbits and counting.

Paris will expose him to more again. It feels, he admits, like a big step. The language barrier alone is a challenge and one he has already faced on Zooms when trying to organise his own coaching staff, recruit players and assorted other tasks.

Building an identity for ‘his’ team while maintaining Racing’s slightly quirky and glitzy culture will be a job in itself but he is 53 years old committing to a four-year deal and knows he has time beyond it to go further again in his career.

Or maybe even back.

“I think I'll be a better coach on the back of (Racing) and you look at the great football managers or the great American football coaches: when they're at their best is when they're in their late-fifties, their sixties. So hopefully I still have a bit to go before I achieve that and Ireland will always be a place I'd love to come back to, definitely.”