Rieko Ioane: Silverware won't decide success of Leinster sabbatical

Leinster's Rieko Ioane in squad training. Pic: Grace Halton/Inpho

It won’t be much longer now until Rieko Ioane finds himself at home with his fiancée and his dogs and plugging back in to life in New Zealand, the day job with the Blues and, he will hope, the All Blacks.

His spell at Leinster so far? A mixed bag.

It took time to find his feet on arrival but a clear climb in form came to a grinding halt in last week’s comprehensive Champions Cup final defeat to a rampant Bordeaux-Begles in a hot and sweaty San Mames stadium.

To be fair, he wasn’t alone in struggling in the Bilbao heat.

Ioane echoes the words of everyone in camp this week. Disappointed, obviously, but ready to turn the page and go about the business of retaining the club’s URC title, starting with Saturday’s quarter-final at home to the Lions.

“That's footy and that's finals,” he says of Bordeaux. “There has to be a winner and a loser.” 

Regrets? More than a few. He thinks of opportunities to execute on both sides of the ball that weren’t taken, in both halves. The review they did as a collective on Tuesday was “harsh” but was the defeat evidence of institutional decline or just a bad day?

The evidence available over the entire season would suggest Leinster are in need of a reboot. Leo Cullen has spoken about root and branch examinations of everything they do. Ioane doesn’t see it in those terms.

“If you look at the amount of times we entered the 22, and whether it was a dropped pass, pass to the back shoulder, knock-ons, whatever it was: if we are able to convert a lot better than what we got, it's definitely a closer game.

“And look, the way we attack in Leinster and the way Bordeaux attack suits both teams because of the type of athletes they have, the type of game that they like to play. So, it's just different and on the day.

“It's just about who can execute the best one for 80 minutes and unfortunately Bordeaux could last week.” 

Whatever Leinster decide in the long-term, it won’t be his problem. The job now before he leaves it to help ensure that a compromised season doesn’t go belly up. That starts with the Aviva Stadium here and an 8pm kick-off.

Ioane waxes lyrical about the overall experience in Ireland. Awesome, he says. Refreshing. Robbie Henshaw and Sam Prendergast took him to the Leinster football final, and she upped a Guinness at the Blue Light pub overlooking Dublin city. Good times.

He seems to have enjoyed the experience of learning a new style of attack and defence – even accounting for the difficulties on both sides of the ball in the Basque Country – but the idea that judgement on his stay will depend on silverware doesn’t sit easily.

“Definitely not, but it doesn't sort of come down to what defines my success, more so the team. We definitely want silverware, that's how legacies are created, and that's something that we want to do.

“We want to enhance the legacy here at Leinster. So silverware is something that we're definitely after, but in terms of individual success and failure, I’ll leave it up to you to decide that.” 

If he’ll be sad to end his OE (Overseas Experience) then living here for most of it without his nearest and dearest hasn’t been easy. Add to that the carrot of a World Cup in Australia next year and he has plenty to draw him home.

Ioane ‘s Test career would sit in the record books as a roaring success if he never played for the All Blacks again. He has 38 tries in 88 games across ten years, but he had fallen down the pecking order on the back of some average form before his hiatus here.

Now comes a chance at a fresh start. Not just on the back of his own sabbatical but with Scott Robertson departed from the scene and Dave Rennie having been parachuted in to the hot seat after some disappointing form and results.

The plan is that Ioane returns reinvigorated from his sabbatical.

"Here's hoping. Look, you play such a high level competition here, both competitions. They are there to set you up and help you perform better and have that experience of bigger games, which you might not get as many back at home.

“You are getting into the mix with the French, you are getting Irish, Scottish teams and it's all been very different. At home you are playing the same teams I played against for so many years. So getting that experience has been great. It should be positive moving forward.”