The television camera zoomed in. Jack Conan, Leinster‘s acting captain, stared at the touchline and then cupped his ears, presumably to indicate that he couldn’t hear the instruction. Assistant coach Sean O’Brien, standing near the touchline, seemed to be the messenger; the communication − based on outcome − was to go for broke.
Leinster trailed the Northampton Saints 37-34 with four minutes to play in last weekend’s Champions Cup semi-final at the Aviva Stadium. The gamble was to stick and take the three points on offer, hoping that fate would subsequently deal you a better hand; or twist, as Leinster did, and go for the corner in the hope of securing a match-winning score.
Players taking instruction or direction from the coaching group is not a new phenomenon; the most innovative example was the traffic light system famously employed by the Springboks during their 2023 World Cup-winning campaign, retaining the title they won four years earlier.
Leinster’s detractors have gleefully tossed disparaging labels in the direction of the province − who are having a four-years-and-counting run without a trophy. It’s been seven years since their last European title; the “three Ps” – population size, purse strings and private schools – are brickbats used against them.
Without delving into the minutiae of each of those seven European defeats − four finals, two semi-finals and a quarter-final − there were several notable differences in the manner of the losses, from being outplayed and physically squeezed by Saracens (twice) and La Rochelle to frittering away a 17-0 lead at the Aviva Stadium (La Rochelle).
Toulouse completely outplayed them for large tranches of the 2024 final, yet Leinster stuck in the game doggedly and came within a coat of paint of winning the game with a drop goal, before succumbing in extra time. If the Irish province had the same group of players and same coaches during that “dry spell”, then some of the jibes might find fertile ground.
Leinster changed just three players from the starting team that won the 2018 final against Racing 92 in Bilbao to the run-on side that lost to Saracens 20-10 the following year. James Lowe replaced captain Isa Nacewa on the left wing while Seán O’Brien and Jack Conan took over from Dan Leavy and Jordi Murphy.
From the last winning Leinster team in 2018 through to the side that lost to Northampton Saints last weekend, the Irish province has used 53 different players in those specific games. Robbie Henshaw is the only one who was in the run-on team in all eight of those matches: the win over Racing 92 and the seven subsequent losses.
There were a cumulative 38 changes made to Leinster match day 23s from 2019 through to this season, at an average of 5.4 per match, the most in 2020 with nine alterations and the fewest in the 2023 defeat to La Rochelle at the Aviva Stadium with just two, Jason Jenkins and Charlie Ngatai, from the previous year.
So, if there was a substantial shift in playing personnel, what about coaches? During the period under discussion Leo Cullen has recruited some of the brightest minds in the global game with a track record of success as well as promoting several former Ireland internationals to the coaching staff.
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Girvan Dempsey, Felipe Contepomi, Stuart Lancaster, John Fogarty, Hugh Hogan, Emmet Farrell, Denis Leamy, Seán O’Brien, Robin McBryde, Andrew Goodman, Jacques Nienaber and Tyler Bleyendaal have helped to oversee the evolution of the playing style and in several cases continue to do so.
The bedding-in period in the coaching turnover for tweaking style and substance wasn’t instantaneous but despite that Leinster still contested four Champions Cup finals.
Cullen and Leinster couldn’t be accused of resting on their laurels when it came to soliciting fresh ideas, bringing in top international talent and easing through some of the best young prospects in the province.
Leinster’s failure in the URC since 2021 is less easy to fob off. Prioritising Europe is all fine and dandy, but it can’t excuse a second-hand mentality when it comes to the league. Good teams win trophies; great ones do so regularly.
If it wasn’t the same players and coaches that presided over the losing streak, then some of the fault lines lie elsewhere; so too a solution – or, at the very least, a discussion point. Leinster and indeed all Irish teams are fairly prescribed in the way that they set up, players able to assimilate large swathes of detail around shape in attack and defence.
They’re very system-orientated and when you look at the players that provide an individual creative spark, for both province and Ireland, they invariably come from the southern hemisphere: Jamison Gibson-Park, James Lowe, Bundee Aki and Mack Hansen are current examples. It’s no surprise that all four are heading for Australia with the Lions.
The elite end of the schools’ game – and they do a brilliant job in many respects – borrows heavily from the professional game, resembling mini-academies, from employing former pros in some cases as directors of rugby to creating an environment that subscribes to all the trappings from training, nutrition and video analysis through to matches, where the system is king.
That can sometimes stifle individual expression in favour of the team collective. Striking that balance in encouraging players to think for themselves and putting a game framework around that can be challenging. Player homogenisation is not the goal.
Young boys and girls should be given the skills sets to thrive irrespective of what level of rugby they go on to play, to be challenged mentally as well as physically, encouraged to play without fear, to colour outside the lines of the playbook or patterns and to understand and embrace opportunity in the knowledge that their team-mates are attuned to a similar thought process.
That’s the environment that nurtures creativity and flair, one that encourages players to have the courage and self-possession to take responsibility, to manage the game on the pitch rather than look to the stands for direction. That freedom of thought and expression can’t just be activated at a professional level. Those instincts have to be nurtured from a young age in club and/or school, as they are in France, Fiji and New Zealand to offer a small sample set.
This season Leinster players to a man have spoken about how Bleyendaal in his first season as attack coach has encouraged them to play heads-up rugby, something that is increasingly visible in matches. It is the way forward to greater player autonomy in matches. Giving players who have come through a system-based culture that freedom will be like trying to mix oil and water initially. It’s worth persisting with it, though, and also recognising that the process is built from the ground up, so an obvious starting point is childhood, when minds are open and receptive.
There’s far more at stake than questioning last Saturday’s endgame politics. It’s time to recognise a fresh approach, in not only trying to break a losing streak in Leinster’s case, but on a broader scale – to futureproof the sport in Ireland by making it more appealing to the most important constituents: those that play. The system should represent the easel holding in place a canvas for the players.
