Time has to be now for Baird and Leinster to silence the doubters

“That shocks me, that question. I feel like the team that’s playing at the moment… I feel the same level of enthusiasm and energy as when we were playing in a final in Europe last year.[It's] the same Leinster to me.”

Thu, 05 Jun, 2025 - 06:55

Brendan O'Brien

The clouds over Leinster are darkening. There’s no denying it. Eliminated from the Champions Cup at the semi-final stage, fitful in their last two games against Glasgow and Scarlets, their attendances are far from where anyone wants them to be.

The pressure is on as what appears to be a rejuvenated Warriors return to Dublin for the third time in as many months for Saturday’s BKT URC semi-final. Get through that and Leinster would still face tough South African opposition in the final.

Ryan Baird is sitting in the boardroom at UCD to talk about the task to come. A collage of multiple trophy-winning teams decorates the wall behind him. Trophies and trinkets sit in a glass case, more again down the hallway in the main lobby.

It’s put to him that this is a club that needs trophies.

“Need? That’s a strong word. Objective? That’s our objective…. Yeah.”

It is clear that Baird is not interested in the popular narrative: that Leinster have lost their mojo at a point in the season where they need it most. And that the loss to Northampton might have produced a hangover that is even now lingering.

A follow-up query on the merits and minuses from last weekend’s stuttering quarter-final defeat of the Scarlets elicits a similar response. This is knockout rugby. Mistakes will happen. Leinster had a 12-point buffer in a game they needed to win by one.

Fans will hope that this is just the public face and not any private thoughts because it's hard to see the province win a first URC title at the fourth attempt of trying by playing their current level of rugby.

It seems like an eternity, rather than mid-April, since Glasgow were routed 52-0 in Ballsbridge in the quarter-final of the Champions Cup - and that coming just a week after Harlequins had been nilled and hit for 52 points in the round of 16.

The edgy, eight-point win against Glasgow in May seems a far more relevant touchstone.

“That’s a sign of a good team,” said Baird who played all 80 minutes of the most recent meeting. “They had like five injuries for that game in the Champions Cup and the last one was a tight game.

“Was it 13-5? That was a real test. It felt like Test-level intensity and physicality. They are reigning champions, they beat Munster in Ireland in a semi-final last year, they are coming over with a lot of confidence.”

Named this week in the second-string Ireland squad that will play Georgia and Portugal next month, Baird has played all 80 minutes of Leinster’s last three games on the back of a season that he admits has been challenged by injuries and selection calls against him.

He will be 26 in July, an age when players are deemed to be entering his prime, and Baird is a big man with a rare athleticism. All that said, he has still to fully convince over an extended timeframe and cement himself into the starting XV for either club and country.

Baird reels off the old Stuart Lancaster line about the need to ‘keep pounding the rock’ when talking about the ups and downs of a career, while at the same time offering a more elastic framework for his body of work this term.

“Are they actually downs in the grand scheme of things? They are lessons to be learned. It’s time to focus on other aspects of your life. It’s very much how you perceive them.

“If you ask me, how has my year been compared to last year when I would have played a lot more games, Ryan Baird has had as good of a year as a person than he has had last year. As a rugby player, I’ve grown, I’ve learned loads.” It has, he claimed, been another “great year”.

Leinster fans may be forgiven for thinking differently.