Leinster grappling with big picture issues as Stormers approach

LOWE-DOWN: Leinster's James Lowe leaves the field after making his 100th appearance and becoming the all time leading try scorer for Leinster. Pic: ©INPHO/Ben Brady.

The URC has been whittled down to the final four and, when it comes to the provinces, Leinster are the only show in town.

And what a show.

If the Champions Cup final defeat to Bordeaux-Begles in Bilbao was the centrepiece of their season then the weeks since have thrown up an extraordinary sequence of events and stories that speak for a club struggling with some major existential issues.

It started with the decision to drop Ciaran Frawley from the matchday squad for last week’s URC quarter-final against the Lions despite his impressive cameo against the Top 14 side. An odd look that brought the player’s imminent move to Connacht back centre stage.

This was followed either side of that Lions win by two Leo Cullen press conferences where he insisted he was still the man to get Leinster to the Promised Land and engaged in a sometimes bizarre exchange about pressure and social media.

The James Lowe situation was raised both times but it still needs to be explained how a player who wants to stay at Leinster - and who Leinster and Andy Farrell apparently want to stay at Leinster – is apparently out the door come the summer.

Cullen has also admitted that the need for the club to cover 40% of the salaries earned by their players on central IRFU contracts from here on in will be a challenge as they lose seven players this summer against, to date, only two arrivals.

Then Jacques Nienaber sat down with the media on Monday and intimated that he could be packing his bags with Lowe on the basis that he doesn’t feel valued by certain fans and media who, he said, are the ultimate arbiters when it comes to doling out P45s.

Then again, there are other signs that we live in strange times.

Go back to Bilbao and that game started with Hugo Keenan, of all people, letting a straightforward kick slip through his fingers in the first seconds. Against the Lions we had the rare sight of the full-back letting himself be nutmegged by a bouncing ball.

“I was backing my football skills but it's been ten years since I togged out at centre-half for Mount Merrion Youths now,” said the Ireland and British and Irish Lions full-back.

“So yeah, I need to brush up on that.” Keenan has actually been in fine form since he put a season of injury issues behind him having sat out the first half of the campaign with a hip issue dealt with by surgery post-Lions and then a freak thumb injury picked up pre-Six Nations.

He is one of a handful of Leinster players – Andrew Porter, Ryan Baird and Diarmuid Managan among the others – who have vocalised the need for players to add some fizz to the squad on their return from injuries and at the end of a long season.

"I knew with six months out, you're going to be rusty, your skills aren't going to be maybe as match-sharp as some of the others, but what you can bring in terms of that energy, work-rate and enthusiasm is what I've been focusing on.”

The soap opera nature of the last week or so is a window into the wider issues at play at the club now as they digest a fifth Champions Cup final loss in the last eight seasons, and it places them in a peculiar situation as they go about their immediate business.

Winning the URC last season stemmed the worst of the bleeding after that traumatic loss to Northampton Saints in Europe, but retaining the league title this time won’t, can’t, have the same restorative effect. That’s just not a card that can be played twice.

The flip side is that failure to win the URC would only magnify the spotlight on the club and the coaching ticket. Either way, it’s increasingly hard to see how the noise dissipates no matter how much Cullen argues that all this pressure is positive.

All of this at a time when both the coaching staff and the playing group is still trying to wash the bitter taste from Bilbao from their systems. Keenan, for instance, spoke of an emotional rollercoaster and the need to pick yourself back up off the ground.

And it was put to him that the URC title is pretty much non-negotiable now as they brace for a semi-final against the Stormers this Saturday.

"Yeah, like we're not looking that far ahead. We're not getting desperate and trying to overwhelm ourselves because that will just put, not too much pressure on ourselves, but it's not the way you go about winning a trophy.

"Yeah, that's probably what we're thinking deep down but it's cliché, you just have to take it week by week. You can't get ahead of the Lions, just as we can't get ahead of the Stormers this week.”