What is the primary task of a provincial head coach such as Leo Cullen? Is it to win the Champions Cup? Failing that, to win the URC? Or is it to develop and produce players for Ireland?
Like Cullen, Clayton McMillan, Stuart Lancaster and Richie Murphy were sought out, interviewed, appointed and paid by the IRFU. Their assistant coaches and backroom staff are under the employment of the respective provinces, albeit subsidised by the IRFU.
So it is that their main role is to supply the national team. The Leinster machine under Cullen has been pretty effective at this. On top of being bulk suppliers for Ireland for some golden years, Leinster also provided 14 players to the summer’s British & Irish Lions tour and the province has 22 players currently in Chicago for Ireland’s opening autumn international against New Zealand, 23 if you count Rieko Ioane.
After a decade of success, can Irish rugby continue to achieve?
And, lest we forget, Leinster won the URC title last June with a thumping 32-7 win over the Bulls at the end of a season in which they won 25 out of 28 matches. That gave them a better win ratio than in their 2017/18 double season, or any other Leinster campaign in the professional era.
READ MORE
So, viewed in that light, Cullen is doing a brilliant job.
Not that anyone among Leinster’s more entitled and disaffected fan base will see it that way, largely as last week’s thumping by Munster probably marked the most emphatic loss to their rivals since the pre-2009 bad old days.
At its core, rugby remains a simple contact game. After being largely dominated in the fixture since the 2011 Magner League final triumph, Munster seemed to bring more emotional energy and physical intensity to last Saturday’s game at Croke Park than Leinster.
There also seemed both more subtlety and clarity to what Munster were doing in attack compared to Leinster. What’s more, Leinster’s bluntness came in the wake of last season’s loose and defensively porous Champions Cup semi-final loss to Northampton, which in turn has shone a light on Tyler Bleyendaal and Jacques Nienaber, and raised questions over whether the hangover from that defeat still lingers.
“There’s the noise and all the rest, and we know people like to have a bit of a chip at us,” said Cullen. “Listen, that’s part of the business. It comes with the territory.”
Casting our minds back to last season’s win over the Bulls, he added: “On a pretty manky old day, I think there was good attack and defence that day. I believe we have a great group of coaches.”
There is, inevitably, a flip side to providing 14 Lions and 22 players to the Ireland squad. As Leinster’s Lions call-ups kept mounting for a tour that continued into August, one couldn’t help but think that this would be Cullen’s most challenging season he was first thrown the keys in 2015.
The net effect is that several Leinster frontliners will be making their first or second appearances of the season for the province in the Champions Cup against Harlequins at the Aviva on December 6th.
True, Tadhg Beirne’s display last Saturday offered Leinster’s Lions no excuses. The sheer scale of the defeat echoed the 35-0 first round loss to the Stormers, when Leinster looked like they’d had no preseason.
For years, Leinster have wanted their South African URC stint to take place earlier in the season. Be careful what you wish for. This post-Lions, pre-November internationals window was not the one.
Back in Cullen’s first season, although they topped their Pro12 Conference and reached the final, the province lost five of their six Champions Cup fixtures. Yet the highlight of that campaign was the 25-11 win over Bath in their penultimate pool game, when Cullen gave Garry Rongrose, Luke McGrath, Peter Dooley, James Tracy, Tadhg Furlong and Ross Molony their first European starts.
McGrath captains Leinster against Zebre at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday (kick-off 5.30pm), and while this has nothing like the cache of that Bath game, Cullen has given debuts to five Leinster players. The quick-witted, quick-footed fullback Hugo McLaughlin and ex-Roscrea prop Jerry Cahir make the starting XV, while Alex Usanov, Bobby Sheehan and the gifted Terenure College outhalf Caspar Gabriel are on the bench. Further energy will come from exciting ex-Sevens winger JJ Kenny and combative lock Diarmuid Mangan.
Those who watch the AIL will be enthused. It’s something of a one-off, callow young side cobbled together in three training sessions. The scars from last Saturday will linger into December regardless.
“Nothing gets won in October, as they say,” said Cullen after announcing his side to face Zebre. “So, maybe it’s a good old jolt for us nice and early rather than have it later in the season after winning a big succession of games just to get to a point later in the season where suddenly you come unstuck in a knockout game.”
But Leinster looked a little stale at Croke Park. Every team needs an infusion of young blood and if some of these fresh-faced players shoot the lights out against Zebre, it could be restorative.
