Past a different country for Jacques Nienaber as Leinster focus on URC ambitions

SWITCH OF FOCUS: Leinster senior coach Jacques Nienaber before the Investec Champions Cup final between Leinster and Toulouse at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London, England. Photo by Brendan Moran/Sportsfile

Leinster. Jeez, where do you start? This was always going to be a jam-packed week with a URC game against Connacht coming just six days after that crushing Champions Cup final defeat to Toulouse in London last Saturday, but the in-tray is already overflowing.

Rhys Ruddock announced on Tuesday that he will be bringing a 15-year career to an end in the coming weeks, Jacques Nienaber has confirmed that the province is still negotiating with Connacht over a possible loan move for Sam Prendergast, while Jason Jenkins is out this week with a knee injury and Garry Ringrose is still striving to get fit.

Other titbits? It appears Hugo Keenan is unlikely to play any further part in the club’s end-of-season schedule as he detours towards the Ireland sevens setup and the Olympic Games in Paris. And that’s all before we get to the meat of it all. That extra-time loss. The whys and the hows and the what nows.

Nienaber was ready to talk. He freewheeled for over five minutes about his presence on the sideline in Tottenham and how Toulouse took exception to it.

Short answer? He spent 21 years of his coaching journey as a physio prowling the pitch. Head coaches aren’t permitted pitchside, he is not the head coach. Case closed.

Now. The important stuff.

He was brought in on the back of an almost preternatural ability to get South Africa over the line. They won all three knockout games at last year’s World Cup by a single point. Leinster had lost the two previous European deciders to La Rochelle by three points and one point.

It looked like a marriage made in heaven but the club’s senior coach will tell you that losing big games is not “foreign” to him. He has lost Currie Cup deciders and Super Rugby finals and he never won a single Rugby Championship in his term over the Boks.

He hasn’t lost three Champions Cup finals on the trot either, but most of his current players have. That’s gotta hurt, but will the mental baggage hinder future bids?

“I can’t think that it would because you work, you get into a final and sometimes you win them and sometimes you lose them, and it is what it is. Does it build up a question of a mental scar? I don’t know, and my personal take is when the past comes knocking on the door, don’t even open it because the past has nothing new to tell you anyway.”

So, what was it that cost them in London? His take? Their discipline, for one. Not in terms of giving penalties away as such, but in their lack of continuity with ball in hand and the turnovers they produced.

The other? The breakdown. Toulouse were given due recognition, but the fact is that Leinster’s ball wasn’t quick enough, especially in the 22.

He dismissed the notion that too much emphasis on defence had blunted their attack and had his own take on the side’s game management approach which saw them eschew a number of penalty shots on goal for kicks to the corner and only to come up empty-handed time after time.

Nienaber heard a stat of nine kickable penalties mentioned and, the thorough type that he is, went through them all and came up with four that were actually gettable, but by no means straightforward, shouts for the posts. In those scenarios it falls to the kicker and their captain. The men on the spot.

“Every kicker, and we as coaches, know what [the kicker’s] success rate is between the two 15s, between the 15 and the 5, and what’s their success rate between the 5 and the touchline. So they know it, we know it, and it’s something you just plot. It’s on a beautiful graph. So they know how consistent they are in what areas of the pitch.”

Judging those decisions now, he explained, would be an exercise distorted by hindsight, and not for the first time either. Weren’t Leinster questioned two years ago for being too conservative against La Rochelle in the Marseille final? And what if they had gone for the posts and missed?

There’s so much more digging around to be done there. The failure to take three easy points at the end before losing to Ulster in Belfast the week before shows that this isn’t an isolated case, but time is short right now and it would be no wonder if the staff’s first job right now was to inject new life into the players as they fix sights on a first ever URC title.

“They don’t need to be picked up,” said the South African.

“That’s their best opportunity [of a trophy now]. I mean, that’s the beauty of rugby. You can lose a game on Saturday but the beauty of rugby is we’ve got Friday night to get right what we got wrong.” 

And, you’d imagine, to start slaying some demons.