Noel McNamara move to Leinster a win for Irish rugby at large

Seventeen of the 36 players in Andy Farrell’s November squad are Leinster men. What happens at the province has a major impact on the Ireland set-up

Incoming Leinster head coach Noel McNamara won two Champions Cups as attack coach with Bordeaux. Pic: Brendan Moran/Sportsfile

Funny how life can take you in circles and propel you forward at the same time. It was the absence of opportunity that led Noel McNamara to give up his job at Leinster five years ago and go abroad. Now it’s a looming vacancy at the province that brings him home.

The Bordeaux-Begles attack guru, academy manager with Leinster when he got itchy feet five years ago, won’t return as far as O’Callaghan’s Mills, but he is bound for Dublin again after being named as successor-to-be to Leo Cullen as head coach.

It’s been some journey, taking in an education that started at schools level, has taken in an AIL stint, underage gigs with club and country, a short spell furthering his education in New Zealand with North Harbour, as well as berths in South Africa and France.

He was two years in the academy gig at UCD by 2021 but the three seasons spent guiding superbly entertaining Ireland U20 sides to big things prior to that had left a strong taste for the day-to-day hit of coaching competitive rugby.

He wanted that again.

“I just missed it, that’s probably the long and the short of it,” he told the Off-Field Rugby Pod later that year. “I missed coaching, I missed the addiction to it, I guess. It was probably something then, once there wasn’t an opening in Leinster in terms of a coaching position I started to look around.” 

Leinster were well set at the time. Leo Cullen had Stuart Lancaster as his senior coach, Felipe Contepomi designing the attack and Robin McBryde looking after the forwards. They had just won the last PRO14 final and reached the semi-finals of the Champions Cup.

So McNamara got himself an agent, chatted it through with his wife Sinead, and decided that if the right opportunity drove by they would flag it down. That ride took them to the Sharks in Durban where the family would spend the next two years.

He arrived in the summer of 2021, in the midst of the Durban riots that resulted in over 250 deaths in the wider KwaZulu-Natal region and at a time when the country was still contending with how to handle the pandemic.

The British and Irish Lions, with five Leinster players among them, were in country on tour at the same time, but their paths continued to diverge from there with McNamara leaving for Bordeaux after two years and winning two Champions Cups in the process.

His star was rising before he left Ireland. It’s gone stratospheric since.

Mick O’Dwyer always had to suffer the sling that ‘anyone could have managed that great Kerry team’, and there is no doubt but that McNamara has had elite players at Bordeaux-Begles and with those Ireland U20 sides too.

The rights and the wrongs of all that will hardly matter at Leinster given he will take over a squad loaded with young talent, littered with Lions and a wider core of elite talent that provides the core to Andy Farrell’s Ireland squad.

And this is why McNamara’s appointment is good for Irish rugby as a whole.

Seventeen of the 36 players in Farrell’s November squad are Leinster men. That’s a hefty percentage even with Paddy McCarthy, Jack Boyle, Jack Conan, Caelan Doris and Garry Ringrose all absent through injury.

What happens in UCD has a major impact on events in Abbotstown.

Leinster under the eye of Jacques Nienaber have lacked the attacking élan that they brought to the table in Lancaster’s time. There are signs that they are more slick this season in that regard, but McNamara’s arrival should accelerate a return to the Leinster of old.

That should, in theory, fit more fluently with the national team’s approach and another bonus for the new boss and the province is the fact that he has worked with so many of these players in the past.

Doris, Dan Sheehan, Ryan Baird, Tommy O’Brien, Harry Byrne and Joe McCarthy are among those who featured on his Ireland U20 collectives. All of them and more besides came through the academy when he was in and around those very buildings.

Ringrose played Ireland 18s for him and Joey Carbery was two years with Bordeaux.

Hell, Sheehan was in his maths class at Clongowes.

Most of that is water that has long passed under the bridge but the fact is that at least 17 of these players have worked in some way with the new man. All of Leinster knows only too well the hell he can harness after their Champions Cup final loss in Bilbao last May.

David Humphreys, the IRFU’s performance director, made a point of highlighting McNamara’s “deep understanding of Irish rugby” in the statement confirming his appointment on Tuesday morning.

This goes deeper than just the Leinster players.

McNamara has coached everyone from Craig Casey, Jack Crowley and Dan Kelly to Cian Prendergast and Ben Murphy through to James Hume and Dave McCann. His familiarity with the system extends to coaches, S&C, analysts, physios, baggage masters and receptionists.

And he brings a global information bank with it.

That he will start in the summer, before the World Cup begins, is another crucial box he ticks. Farrell is due to be in situ until the next one in 2031, but McNamara has just placed himself firmly in the frame to be a successor. First things first, though.