Andrew Porter: 'It’s nearly like PTSD, the last few years'

Does it need saying again that this was Leinster’s fifth Champions Cup final defeat in just eight years? Porter has played in the last four, and in last season’s semi-final loss to Northampton Saints.

Leinster prop Andrew Porter. Pic: Grace Halton/Inpho

Perspective came easily enough for Andrew Porter at the weekend.

Leinster’s Champions Cup ambitions had long lain in tatters when Paddy McCarthy hobbled off with just ten minutes to go. 

The loosehead was only six minutes into an injury comeback from one foot problem, suffered in January. Now the other one was injured and his season over with it.

“You wouldn't know that he was injured, or that we lost the game once after the game,” said Porter who came off and then back on for McCarthy. “He's just the most positive man you can ever meet, incredibly hard worker. That's why it's so hard to see.

“It's incredible for him because the amount of work he's put in to get himself back for the final, and then just for an injury like that… There's not much you can do. I remember doing that one, then breaking my foot, same spot. Yeah, it's just tough, incredibly tough.” 

Wins and losses, performances and post-mortems: they were all put to one side the next day when Porter played host to upwards of 70 family members for his son’s first birthday party. A lovely distraction, as he described it.

But reality had to bite at some point.

Does it need saying again that this was Leinster’s fifth Champions Cup final defeat in just eight years? That this was the most comprehensive loss of them all? Porter has played in the last four, and in last season’s semi-final loss to Northampton Saints.

He feels it. Of course he does.

“It's nearly like PTSD, the last few years, but there's that nice thing that we have something still to play for in the end of the season. It's obviously not the way you want to be starting the week, but the postmortem analysis was obviously tough, obviously necessary.

“It’s a great group here, being able to take what we can from the game without being too down or pointing fingers too much, but it's great to be able to flip the page and have something else to look forward to.” 

That something else’s is the run-in to the URC. Leinster will take their title defence into the knockout stages against the Lions in the Aviva Stadium this Saturday and there isn’t any doubt but that a back-to-back in the league would be commendable.

The problem is that it can’t make up for the absence of the one pot they want more than most. Leinster players talk about their Champions Cup obsession. Leo Cullen has referenced it. There’s no making this season whole again. Not now.

Ask Porter where it all went wrong last weekend and his take, like that of others in the Leinster camp, gets bogged down in the weeds of a first-half that went from bad to worse in the blink of an eye.

He reels off the moments that mattered. Their opening try, the Louis Bielle-Biarrey kick dead that grazed Hugo Keen’s finger and set Bordeux-Begles up for a five-metre scrum and a try. Another kick and awkward bounce. An intercept.

It’s not that he absolves Leinster of blame. Porter held his hand up: they gave the now back-to-back champions too much opportunity, and he isn’t the first to lament their own poor return from so many 22 entries.

“If you looked at the stats without the score you'd be like, "Oh, that's that, [Leinster] definitely won’. They’re just numbers at the end of the day, like. That's where we felt that we were building pressure in terms of the metres gained, gainline success.

“We were winning in those areas, but it's just those breakaways, those small things in the game where you just let them where you just let them have a foothold like it and it just keeps building.” 

It’s only fair that they should curse some of the ill fortune that befell them in Bilbao but its perplexing that anyone could review that tape and make a case for sliding doors. The French side was so much better in every sense that mattered.

This wasn’t a case of Leinster getting out of the wrong side of the bed on Saturday morning. The concern is that Leinster are regressing while Bordeaux-Begles are just climbing ever higher but Porter won’t, or can’t accept that there is a gap to be bridged.

“No, if there was a few things gone differently in the first-half it would have been a lot closer. It's just a few errors here and there that are just uncharacteristic in parts of it. So I don't think there's a huge gap in terms of talent or anything like that.

“You could look at the season as a whole rather than the big games at the end and you see how tight it is, and obviously they've got some great teams in Top 14, but … it's tough to say from my standpoint.

"Like, I'm not really looking at that big picture now, but yeah, it's small things that… Obviously on paper the score, there was a big gap between us, but I don't think it's too much of a big gap as a whole.”