Good Friday appeared to fall more in summer than spring time at the Aviva Stadium yesterday, where the vast majority of a remarkable, sun-kissed crowd of 32,604 enjoyed Leinster's latest rollick in the Heineken Champions Cup.
Their eight tries to three, 56-20 win over Connacht in their Round of 16 second-leg tie neatly maintained their prolific scoring average in this season's competition and completed an 82-41 aggregate win.
The four-times winners thus secured the safest of safe passages to their sixth quarter-final in a row and 17th in the last 20 seasons, where they will assuredly face Premiership leaders Leicester Tigers at Welford Road.
The Tigers take a 29-10 lead into their second leg Round of 16 tie at home today (kick-off 5.30pm) against a declining and deflated Clermont. Cullen spent two years with Leicester from 2005 to 2007 and said of their probably quarter-final opponents: "Yeah, it's going to be a great test for our guys if that unfolds.
“It’s a great place to play. I can hear the noises in my head, what it sounds like even over there, the Crumbie Stand and the stomping of the feet. There are some special sounds in my mind from when I was there, obviously in the home dressing-room. It’s very different when you’re in the away dressingroom but yeah it’s a great place and we’ll see how it plays out tomorrow. I won’t discount Jonno [Gibbes] just yet.”
After a bright opening, last night’s result was never in doubt from the moment Jamison Gibson-Park scored their first try after 10 minutes.
“We settled into the game okay after that initial five or six minutes, good tries off transition, had a good dominant period and scored some good tries in the first half. Generally speaking we got the job done.”
The star turn was James Lowe, whose four tries took his tally to 41 in 62 appearances, and 11 in his last six matches, for Leinster.
“He put in a good week this week. There is always bits of everyone’s game to improve upon. He’s very, very talented, as we know,” said Cullen.
‘Applies himself’
“When he really applies himself, he’s as good as anyone out there. He worked hard this week and you can see the rewards that he got off the back of that.
“He brings a different level in terms of the power that he has in contact. It’s a skill that he’s able to manage contact on his terms. When we signed James, we saw that back in New Zealand with the Chiefs. He’s here a long time now. He’s a colourful character, as we know. It was great to see him go well over the last couple of weeks.”
As happened to them this season after falling a couple of scores behind, and as a deflated Andy Friend acknowledged, Connacht began to panic and lose connection in defence, missing 31 tackles in all.
“They definitely were dominant. I thought we had an opening exchange there that was in the process of giving us confidence, pretty much the first time though they touched the footy they ran 75 metres and scored and all of a sudden all of that dominance we exerted was just released and they seemed to just go from strength to strength from there,” he said.
“But the message is pretty simple, the game of footy is about point of attack and strength of tackle, winning your physical battles, and if you don’t do that you won’t win the game of football.
“It’s hard to see the positives, but it’s a pretty fair reflection on the way our season has gone,” said Friend, who added that Connacht’s response in their final three URC games will be critical, even if qualification for the quarter-finals looks forlorn given they are 11 points outside the top eight. Besides which, eighth place would probably mean a quarter-final away to Leinster.
Both Leinster and Connacht now embark on two-week treks to South Africa, with Leinster likely to bring a squad in the low 30s for their first match against the Sharks in Durban before some rotation for their game against the Stormers in Cape Town.
"If you want to stay alive in the two competitions you need a good chunk of guys," said Cullen, speaking alongside Caelan Doris. "When Caelan and some of the guys were taking it easy in camp during the Six Nations we had some guys with their shoulders to the wheel back in base camp trying to push us up the mountain and carrying the load for all these guys.
“Those guys are itching to play now.”
