Leo Cullen's exit: time feels right for change at Leinster

The province's head coach has confirmed he will leave at the end of the upcoming season. 

Leinster head coach Leo Cullen during the URC grand final match against Vodacom Bulls at Croke Park. Pic: Seb Daly/Sportsfile

Alex Ferguson got plenty right during his long and successful term in charge of Manchester United. One thing he got wrong was the announcement in the summer of 2001 that he would be clearing out his office 12 months later.

The Scot, still only 59 at the time, would eventually row back on that decision and add six league titles, a Champions League, an FA Cup, three League Cups and the Club World Cup to an already bulging CV before finally stepping away.

But that premature retirement call would remain a bugbear years later.

"I think a lot of them had put their tools away,” he said a decade ago. “They thought, ‘oh, the manager’s leaving’, but when I changed my mind in the January I started thinking about United again and how we could get back on top.” 

Leo Cullen is only 48 but it’s 32 years since he first represented Leinster as a schools player. Take away two seasons spent with Leicester Tigers in the mid-noughties and he has been a part of the furniture ever since.

The news on Monday that he will finish up as head coach when his contract expires next summer, after a dozen years in the current role, came out of the blue in one sense and, in another, landed as no surprise at all.

Retaining their URC title last Friday night, at the expense of the Bulls in Croke Park, allowed Leinster to sign off for the campaign with silverware, but the Champions Cup final defeat to Bordeaux-Begles still casts a long shadow over the off-season.

A fifth decider loss in a row in the competition, that drip-drip effect of disappointment must have leaked into the bones of the club long before now, with the outside noise created by it all a constant soundtrack to everything they are doing.

It feels like the time is right for a change but, as with Ferguson at Old Trafford, there is always a risk that the season to come could list into a sort of limbo. Maybe the prospect of an incoming World Cup will be one means of avoiding that fate.

Leinster have still to confirm any new players for the season to come. Joey Carbery will be one of the few but they do have James Lowe, Rieko Ioane, Ciaran Frawley and Will Connors among a list of men heading the opposite direction.

There is a fear that next year’s squad will be thinner and less able for the challenge of competing on both fronts, even if the return to an RDS Arena now rebranded the Laya Arena will be a help for various reasons.

Cullen’s impending exit also raises the question as to what comes next for his staff, all of them out of contract in 2027.

The expectation with Jacques Nienaber is still that the senior coach will make the switch back to the Springboks and put his shoulder to the wheel as they try to make history by winning the Webb Ellis for the third time in a row.

Robin McBryde will be with the club eight years as forwards coach by that point, Tyler Bleyendaal is just two years into his role in Dublin and the coaching staff is rounded out by Sean O’Brien who is contact skills coach and Emmett Farrell on the kicking side.

If the Ferguson example serves as a cautionary tale then the realpolitik of the situation was that it was done with the best of intentions: to try and allow the club sufficient time to get the succession stakes right.

History shows United eventually handled all that disastrously but Irish rugby is a small pool. News of Cullen’s departure would have seeped out long before next summer and it’s hard to criticise his and the club’s timing in general.

Next year’s World Cup brings another four-year cycle to a natural end and the fact is that players and coaches, agents, clubs and countries are already jockeying for positions on the far side of it. Leinster have to be proactive.

The province’s CEO Shane Nolan has said as much by saying the club has already begun the process of finding their next head coach. Former Crusaders and All Blacks coach Scott Robertson and Ronan O’Gara are two names that will inevitably get mentions.

Andy Farrell’s extension with the Ireland team through to 2031 will have a knock-on effect everywhere else while former Leinster employee Noel McNamara has only recently signed a new deal to stay with Bordeaux-Begles until 2029.

Joe Schmidt, so successful during his stints with Leinster and Ireland, and about to finish up with the Wallabies in the coming weeks, has only this month ruled out the prospect of taking over the province again.

Johnny Sexton is on the doorstep, Felipe Contepomi has history there and Simon Easterby is another of Farrell’s staff whose name will probably be raised given his length of tenure as an assistant with Ireland that goes back 12 years now.

Ultimately, Leinster should have no shortage of takers, even if the academy pipeline isn’t delivering in the way it was and with financial restraints on a club now covering 40% of national player contracts being all the greater.

As for Cullen, he has done the state plenty of service.

He took on the job at a time when the club was in some flux and delivered six league titles. The flip side is they have managed just the one Champions Cup trophy despite a roster oozing with Ireland and British and Irish Lions-level class.

Still, one last chance to put that bit right.