Leinster players take ownership in attempt to claim Champions Cup glory

Andrew Porter during a Leinster Rugby squad training session. Pic: Tyler Miller/Sportsfile

Late April and here we are again asking whether we are any the wiser, after 22 games spanning two competitions, as to how Leinster will fare come the back end of their Holy Grail that is the Champions Cup.

Which isn’t to say that the campaign so far hasn’t been interesting, or different.

“It’s been a bit of a weird season for us, up and down,” said Dan Sheehan after their defeat of Sale Sharks in the quarter-final stage earlier this month. As summations go, it was concise and straight to the point.

The province has lost six URC games already. It’s ten years since they chalked up that many league reversals in the one campaign and that was in a PRO12 competition that demanded four games more than they need to navigate now.

They have made it this far in ‘Europe’ courtesy in no small way of the fact that this is now a competition that takes an age to separate the wheat from the chaff. Leinster have beaten only average sides, or sides going through a rough spell, to get to this semi-final.

They haven’t had to rip up any trees, basically.

Losing three successive finals, and then a semi to an unfancied Northampton Saints side last year, has ratcheted the pressure up on a club that has an abundance of resources on and off the pitch, but one that has earned itself the tag of nearlymen.

The coaching staff has taken its share of the criticisms for all that. Leo Cullen has been the main man for eleven years now and failure to get over the line in Bilbao in the final, or to get past Toulon this Saturday, will renew calls for a new name on the head coach’s door.

Nobody questioned Jacques Nienaber’s props when the two-time World Cup-winning coach landed in Dublin, but the South African admitted just weeks ago that Leinster are still trying to find the balance between their attacking DNA and his defensive gospel.

Some of their rugby with ball in hand has been sensational in recent weeks but forwards coach Robin McBryde echoed the widely-held view inside and outside the tent this week when admitting they have yet to hit their straps.

It’s all a bit puzzling.

The question has been asked time and again: how can a team with a glut of Ireland’s serially successful and best Test players, buttressed by a sprinkling of overseas talent, consistently fail to get the job done when push comes to shove?

Sheehan has been doing more than most with a string of superb performances and he has pointed the way off the pitch as one of the leadership group, and a man who has taken the armband on this times when Caelan Doris has been unavailable.

It was after that same Sale game when Sheehan spoke of players “grabbing a hold” of this project having “let things slide” as a collective earlier in a season that had been undeniably hampered by the Lions commitments so many had known deep into last summer.

The hooker shared how the players were working on making themselves more accountable, not waiting for the coaching staff to pick up on things, and how there was enough experience in the group to almost act as coaches themselves.

“It’s a strong message coming from your peers,” said coach Robin McBryde. “With the high standards the internationals bring back from Irish camp, there’s an expectancy to know your detail inside out really.

“From a coaching point of view, I’m not going to retrace their steps. They’ve got to see it as they see it and call each other out. They’re used to training and playing at a certain standard. Anything below that.. like, come on. You can’t have double standards, basically.

“They know what an international set-up looks like and feels like, they know the demands. That shouldn’t be any different when you step back into the Leinster camp. With some players it happens naturally because they’re good leaders.

“Others you have to poke them a little bit.” 

That’s just human nature, but the wealth of talent and experience available to Leinster is nothing short of astonishing. Cullen may be without over 300 caps worth of input thanks to injuries this week and still be able to field over 700 caps anyway.

Ten of the current squad were on the books when they last won the Champions Cup in 2018, but James Lowe didn’t make the 23 that day in Bilbao and Andrew Porter, Jack Conan and Jamison Gibson-Park all came on in the final quarter.

For all of them, and the other half-dozen, time is running out. Gibson-Park is 34. Furlong, Conan and Lowe are all 33 and Henshaw 32. 

For them and others the window to bridge that gap is closing rapidly. No wonder the players are taking this one on their own shoulders.