Over the past few decades, Doug Howlett, Damien de Allende, Ruan Pienaar, Steven Kitshoff, Duane Vermeulen, CJ Stander, Jean de Villiers, BJ Botha, Christian Cullen and Casey Laulala have all played in the colours of either Ulster or Munster.
So please don’t tell me that there is some form of conspiracy that provides Leinster with an unfair advantage in the overseas player market.
Winning attracts winners.
Should the 7-1 split be outlawed?
Leading New Zealand players who are granted a single season’s sabbatical want to maximise that experience by signing with a club that has an outstanding record of success.
Do you think Rieko Ioane would have signed for Leinster if his New Zealand centre partner, Jordie Barrett, had not recommended it?
Perhaps the most uncomfortable question for Munster and Ulster is why players like de Allende, Kitshoff, Vermeulen and RG Snyman underperformed while at their clubs?
Instead of looking for conspiracy theories, the three non Dublin-based provinces should be asking why Snyman has excelled at Leinster after being a frustrating disappointment while wearing red?
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The reality is that Leinster’s superpower is not their recruitment policy but their cultural strength.
To have been within minutes of lifting so many trophies and failing would have broken most teams. The doubters, including me, wondered if they had missed their window of opportunity.
Yet each season, following the heartbreak of another Champions Cup final defeat, Leinster somehow find the emotional and mental strength to get up off the canvas and once again fight against the best.
That is truly extraordinary.
Proving us all wrong, Leinster are, once again, into the Champions Cup semi-finals and are nine points clear in the URC.
That takes an uncommon amount of grit, tenacity and dedication. If we define organisational culture as “The way we do things around here,” then it is Leinster’s cultural qualities that have turned Snyman’s poor performances in Limerick into match winners in Dublin.
When talent is combined with a powerful culture, success follows. Same man, different culture, different performance.
For decades, part of Leinster’s culture has been extracting the knowledge from their overseas coaching and playing imports and injecting it into their organisation.
Players learn more from an experienced team-mate than they do from a coach. The greatest example of this is a generation ago, when Brad Thorn joined Leinster.
Thorn was a rugby league icon in Australia, representing the Australian Kangaroos and winning every trophy on offer in league.
As a child, he had emigrated to Brisbane from New Zealand and to honour his father’s memory, he switched codes and returned to New Zealand. With Canterbury, he won Super Rugby titles and at the 2011 Rugby World Cup in New Zealand, he lifted the William Webb Ellis trophy. His career was of unparalleled success.
Arriving at Leinster, he drove the standards he had learned from his past. When Thorn was Devin Toner’s second row partner, Toner’s performances rocketed before our eyes.
Thorn added the Heineken Cup to his crowded cabinet.
In this generation, another Kiwi, Jordie Barrett, has been exceptional for Leinster and like Big Dev before him, Sam Prendergast is the winner.
Having the experience of Barrett talking in his ear during games and at practice is empowering Prendergast to improve his craft.
Undoubtedly, both Robbie Henshaw and Gary Ringrose have been a huge benefit to Prendergast, but sometimes a new set of eyes sees a different picture.
After a faltering opening quarter that cost them any chance of an upset against Bordeaux and a controversial loss to the Bulls, Munster must avoid the corrosive concept of a “brave defeat”.
That phrase destroys organisations. Too often, Munster have masked technical and tactical failures behind those corrosive words.
As Ulster coach Richie Murphy complained about Leinster’s illegalities at the scrum and breakdown, Connacht did not have the physical power to run down the Stormers.
All of which confirms that while Leinster continue to defy the odds, Irish professional rugby appears to be in decline.
The recent decision by the IRFU to force the provinces to increase their share of national contract payments from 30 per cent to 40 per cent is designed to address the decline within Munster, Ulster and Connacht.
Financially, this will greatly impact Leinster as they have 11 of the 14 centrally contracted players on their books.
The concept is that the IRFU will save substantial money on Leinster’s centrally contracted players and spend it on improving the high performance systems in the other provinces.
If the money is wisely invested, it is a reasonable concept. However, the policy has the possibility of real danger for Irish rugby.
The IRFU must ensure the policy implements the old saying that “a rising tide lifts all boats”.
While raising the standards of the other three provinces is essential for the good of Irish rugby, of equal importance is that the policy does not drag Leinster down.
If Leinster’s performances were to deteriorate, then so too would the Irish national team.
The money must not be spent on buying overseas players for Ulster, Munster and Connacht. The long term goal of the policy must be to improve the quality of players graduating from all the provincial academies. Including Leinster’s.
The weakness inside all four Irish academies is the lack of staff with professional game experience to educate the developing players.
While I have the greatest of respect for Ireland’s hard working academy coaches, we need more coaches with professional team experience and deep technical knowledge to educate the future generations.
Some old, gnarled rugby souls, with a deep understanding of what it takes to be a successful professional, are required to better educate the academy system.
For many years, I have believed Irish rugby requires the creation of the role of technical director.
A purely rugby coaching position, to not only improve the technical aspects of the Elite Player Pathway but also to improve the knowledge of the Developing Elite Coaches who work in our academy system.
Here, the name Stuart Lancaster comes to mind.
If much of the money diverted from Leinster’s central contracts was placed into increasing the number and quality of coaches working across our academy system, in tandem with a national approach to technical excellence, something that is currently lacking in all our academies, including Leinster’s, then it would be a powerful investment to lift the long-term performances of the provinces and the national team.
