Jordan Larmour: 'The worst thing you can do is go out into a final and not fire any shots'
PAST HURT: Jordan Larmour and Leinster are in search of the Champions Cup title which has eluded them for the past two finals. Pic: Harry Murphy/Sportsfile
This may be a third consecutive Champions Cup final Leinster have reached in their ongoing quest for a fifth European title but do no let anyone tell you it is a matter of routine.
As Saturday’s Croke Park experience displayed, reaching the showpiece of Northern Hemisphere club rugby, as Leo Cullen’s team have now done, is never easily attained. And as the last two years have evidenced, scaling the ultimate step to the pinnacle is something even more difficult to achieve.
It took surviving a late surge from the English Premiership leaders for them to get there this time around, as the game unfolded in eerily similar fashion to last season’s final against La Rochelle – a 17-point lead constructed on the back of a scintillating James Lowe hat-trick inside 43 minutes severely diminished by an opponent unwilling to acknowledge when they are beaten. Crucially for Leinster, it was not fatal this time around, as a young and talented Saints outfit hit back through tries from George Hendy and replacement Tom Seabrook but were unable to repeat the feat of Ronan O’Gara’s defending champions at Aviva Stadium 12 months ago by overtaking the Irish province on their home turf.
They survived and now that they have given themselves another shot, against five-time champions Toulouse at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on May 25, it is to be applauded and appreciated, just as the boys in blue were by the vast majority of the tournament-record 82,300 crowd who packed Croke Park for the first game of club rugby there in 15 years.
“I suppose it’s the quality of the players we have but also the quality of the coaching,” Leinster wing Jordan Larmour said when asked to reflect on what it takes to reach three finals in a row.
“We pride ourselves on how we train, our training habits, doing our prep in the week, getting across all our detail, trying to know our opponent inside out. I think the coaches do a really good job of that.
“Just as a group, understanding what we want to do with our gameplan. It’s a mixture of everything. You’ve got to get across all your work as an individual, add to the team performance. And then as a team it’s knowing your role and then the quality of the team we have, it makes it all kind of work.”
There is a lot more work to be done as Cullen and first-season senior coach Jacques Nienaber plot their ascent to the peak. The addition of South Africa’s World Cup-winning head coach has undoubtedly made Leinster more of complete package. Their aggression without the ball, forged over the last decade in Nienaber’s stints as a defence coach at Munster and the Springboks, was a key factor in nullifying a Northampton attack that has torn the Premiership to shreds this season, at least for the first 55 minutes before what matchday captain Caelan Doris admitted was his side falling into “a bit of a lull” that allowed Saints to finally fire.
Yet Leinster also have another precious commodity: the bitter experience of two losing final appearances as their bid for a first Champions Cup success since 2018 has been derailed by O’Gara’s Top 14 heavyweights in both Marseille and, most painfully, Dublin. “You have that feeling of losing and you just don’t want to feel it again,” Larmour said on Saturday night. “It drives you on a bit. But it doesn’t really come into your thinking, for me anyway, what happens if we lose. It’s more just focusing on the job at hand.
“The worst thing you can do is go out into a final and not fire any shots and go into your shell a little bit. That’s something we’ve talked about as a group, not going into our shell, backing what we’ve done, the prep during the week, how hard we train, the detail the coaches give us. If you focus on all that stuff, then the result takes care of itself.”
Larmour, still only 26 but having won a winner’s medal against Racing 92 in Bilbao six years ago, added: “We’ve learned a lot about ourselves over the last few finals. Just about being in the moment when things aren’t going to plan.
“You can get a bit frantic and we’ve learned to use that, to try and get back to neutral, to try and get on the same page again. Talk about what’s going on – I think that’s something we’ve really grown as a group in doing.
“Handling the chaos, coming in a circle and realising what’s happening, saying it out loud so that we can get back on the same page. If we need to fix something up, we can do that.
“It's going to be our third final in a row. We haven’t won one in a while. So we’re going to do everything we can to do it.”
: C Frawley (H Byrne, 79); J Larmour (J O’Brien, 72), R Henshaw, J Osborne, J Lowe; R Byrne, J Gibson-Park; A Porter (C Healy, 71), D Sheehan (R Kelleher, 53), T Furlong (M Ala’alatoa, 60); R Molony (J Jenkins, 53), J McCarthy; R Baird, J van der Flier (J Conan, 53), C Doris – captain.
: L McGrath.
: G Furbank; J Ramm (T Litchfield, 78), T Freeman, F Dingwall, G Hendy (T Seabrook, 68); F Smith, A Mitchell (T James, 69); A Waller (E Iyogun, 55), C Langdon (S Matavesi, 58), T Davison (E Millar-Mills, 58); A Moon (T Mayanavanua, 69), A Coles; C Lawes – captain, S Graham (A Scott-Young, 64), J Augustus.
: Mathieu Raynal (France)
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
