Leo Cullen: 'If you lose a final are you classified as a failure?'

Leinster face into the URC Grand final with pressure to bring home silverware.

FINAL WINNERS: Leinster and Bull go head-to-head with both eager to claim the trophy. Pic: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile

Two teams will carry heavy mental loads borne of past final defeats into Saturday’s BTK URC final at Croke Park. Only one will be able to dispense with all that baggage by the time rugby takes its latest leave of the GAA’s most famous pile.

For the loser, a summer haunting awaits.

It was instructive to listen to Jake White’s attempts to reframe all this in his side’s favour earlier in the week. The Bulls head coach flipped two URC decider defeats in the last three years on their head by suggesting they had overachieved just to get that far both times.

His lads, he said, were in Dublin as underdogs.

Leo Cullen got his turn to table a counter on Thursday after Leinster’s captain’s run at the stadium. He was in chipper form for most of it, but these have been difficult times in the blue corner and that strain showed briefly.

There was no single question that stung too much in and of itself.

The Leinster boss has been asked time and again about confidence levels and mental shortcomings and selection decisions and it was a tame remark about lessons taken from past knockout defeats that prompted the prickly response.

“They’re all individual games. Every playoff game is a final as such. So we have played in lots of playoff games, whether they come in a quarter-final, semi-final or final. The group is learning all the time, young players come through and you are adding layers of experience.

“I think the way some of the questions are leading me it’s like whoever loses is a failure in this game,” he suggested. “So they are two good teams going at it. If you lose in a final, are you classified as a failure?” 

That last part wasn’t rhetorical, the question hanging uncomfortably in a stretching silence until the questioner and Cullen debated their respective points for a spell and, in fairness, laughter from the top table wasn’t long in returning.

His point that both teams could play their best ever game and that one of them will still end up a ‘loser’ is well made, but he knows that another defeat here will condemn his side to a fourth straight season without silverware and that this just wouldn’t be good enough.

So this is about more than one game or one performance.

The good news is that Leinster will have Garry Ringrose and Josh van der Flier back for the weekend’s outing. The pair sat out the semi-final win against Glasgow. So did Hugo Keenan and Tadhg Furlong who have not recovered in time to lend a hand.

Those are the only changes to the starting XV with Jamie Osborne slipping to the bench and Scott Penny missing out altogether as Leinster, like the Bulls, opt for a 5-3 bench split where Ross Byrne gets the nod ahead of Ciaran Frawley.

The Bulls’ only alteration in personnel from their last four defeat of the Sharks in Pretoria is enforced with Marco van Staden drafted in to replace the injured back row Cameron Hanekom and Marcell Coetzee moving to No.8.

Van Staden is no spring chicken. He will be one of eight Bulls players aged 30 or more on duty here. Leinster will boast nine. The average ages of their matchday squads come in at 28.2 for the province and 28.1 for the visitors.

And yet White described his lot as a veritable bunch of kids.

“Look through their team, there’s a tonne of experience,” said Cullen, laughing again. “I know Jake was saying they’re a young squad. I’m not sure what squad he’s talking about. That’s not a young group, that’s not a young team. He was talking about that on Tuesday.

“Is he trying to lull us all into some false sense, is he? A young group? Do you see a young group there? They’re a serious experienced group we’re up against and a team that has unbelievably high standards, that is used to winning. It’s in their blood isn’t it?” 

The Bulls won three Super Rugby titles in their day. The club is indelibly linked with 25 Currie Cups. Leinster won eight Celtic League titles before this attempt at a first of the URC variety. There have been four ‘European’ Cups and a Challenge Cup.

Winning is part of the fabric in both houses. Only one will feel bare in the months to come.