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Extra.ie
14-06-2025
- Sport
- Extra.ie
All on the line for Leinster as Leo Cullen's side seek first trophy in four years
Leo Cullen has pretty much seen it all at this stage. But the Leinster head coach couldn't help but marvel at how this competition has evolved. Cullen was part of a Leinster side which won the inaugural Celtic League in 2001, beating Munster in a thriller at the old Lansdowne Road. Back then, the competition had Welsh sides like Bridgend, Pontypridd, Ebbw Vale and Caerphilly providing the opposition. Pic: Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile The league would expand its borders and go through various rebrands from the Magners League to the RaboDirect Pro12 (yes, you read that correctly) to the Guinness Pro14. Teams such as the Borders, Celtic Warriors, Aironi, the Southern Kings and Cheetahs came and went. For a long time, the league went a bit stale and when Leinster sealed their fourth consecutive title (in third gear, really) in 2021, it was clear that something needed to change. Neither Leinster nor the tournament organises were satisfied with the standard of the competition. The tournament was an easy target for a long time and there were no shortage of naysayers, this writer included, when it was announced that the Bulls, Sharks, Stormers and Lions were coming on board to join the newly-branded URC four years ago. How was a cross-hemisphere league going to work? In fairness, the URC has been a roaring success. The South African teams and their fanbases have bought into it and, as Leinster have discovered in recent seasons, the URC is a tough title to win. As Cullen observed recently, if someone had told you that Leinster and the Bulls would be contesting a league final at Croke Park a few years back, it would have been met with a healthy dose of scepticism. GAA headquarters is the setting for Leinster's last stand this season. And it feels like a potentially era-defining game for this playing group and the under-fire coaching team. Pic: Piaras í' Mídheach/Sportsfile Victory against a talented and powerful Bulls team this evening will dampen down a lot of the negative noises around this operation of late. Leinster are well used to criticism at this stage. When they're winning, they're branded a superclub with too much resources and favouritism from the IRFU. When they lose, they're chokers who don't have the mental fortitude to see tight knockout games home. They'll be pilloried for going four seasons without a trophy if they slip up today. If they win, they won't get too much kudos outside of their inner sanctum either. This is mighty Leinster after all. They should be winning a league they regularly top – with plenty to spare – season on season. Internally, they know what's at stake. Landing a URC won't heal the Champions Cup wounds but it can accelerate the healing process and banish some demons when it comes to winning titles. Win today and the Leinster squad will depart for the summer break with a spring in their step. A dozen personnel – and potentially a few more – will be heading away on Lions duty. Another crew will be getting some exposure on the Ireland development tour. They can bring those good vibes back into Leinster camp ahead of the next campaign and with an All Blacks superstar like Rieko Ioane on the way, Leinster can plot their next European tilt with some fresh optimism. Defeat today, however, will only amplify the feeling that Cullen and his current coaching team have taken this squad as far as they can. Cullen's job is not on the line today. It shouldn't be. For all the well-documented knockout woe, the former Leinster second row has built the province into a European force. The club's power brokers and the IRFU wouldn't be so reactive and short-sighted either. It's worth remembering where Leinster were when Cullen was appointed head coach almost a decade ago. He'd been thrown in at the deep end rather prematurely after Matt O'Connor had been handed his P45. Succeeding Joe Schmidt was never going to be easy, but the Aussie never looked like a good fit from the early days. So, Cullen got the call. The province were at a low ebb, finishing bottom of their Champions Cup pool during a grim 2016/17 campaign, culminating in a 50-point hammering at the hands of Wasps in Coventry. Cullen never panicked. He backed his academy. Within 12 months, a youthful Leinster were winning the tournament. That 2018 triumph in Bilbao has been Cullen's sole triumph in Europe and the chase for that fifth star has become an obsession. Yes, Leinster have fallen at plenty of hurdles in the meantime but they have continually been banging on that Champions Cup-shaped door every year. Cullen has a lot of credit in the bank, with the IRFU, his own employers and his players. Still, there may be some awkward conversations in the off season if Leinster fail in yet another final. And this won't be easy. The Bulls are contesting their third final in four years and they are hungry to land a maiden URC. For head coach Jake White and this group, there is no sense of this trophy being something of a late season, consolation prize. White, who has serious pedigree as a coach when it comes to knockout rugby, said without hesitation this week that winning the URC would be up there with the Super Rugby triumphs in 2007, 2009 and 2010 when the likes of Victor Matfield, Bakkies Botha and Fourie du Preez were lording it in the southern hemisphere. 'It would be exactly the same,' he declared earlier this week. 'In South Africa, winning is what every franchise wants to do and I'm not talking from a standard point of view.'People have had this debate about whether southern hemisphere and Super Rugby are anything like URC rugby. 'I just think the achievement of winning something when you've spent as many weeks as any team has in preparing for a game like this becomes as important as any other competition.' The visitors are motivated. White will have a smart tactical plan. The Bulls have a monstrous scrum, spearheaded by giant tighthead Wilco Louw. They have the capacity to make this Grand Final a real dogfight. Leinster, despite missing some serious Ireland personnel, still have the talent and depth to get the job done. Cullen and his coaching team have been tactically outmanoeuvred too many times in big games. White has managed it twice in URC semi-finals. Ronan O'Gara, Ugo Mola, Phil Dowson and Graham Rowntree have done the same, either in European knockout games or the business end of this competition. Cullen and his backroom team need a win. The players – a so-called golden generation – desperately need to end this title drought. Ditto the coaching team. There is much more than just a trophy on the line today.
The 42
13-06-2025
- Sport
- The 42
'If you lose a final are you a failure?' - Cullen's bigger picture approach to URC decider
LEO CULLEN BECAME increasingly animated as he pre-URC final press conference stretched toward the half hour mark in Croke Park yesterday. He met the initial questions with a familiar hand-off, twisting an opening query about the return of Lions-bound pair Josh van der Flier and Garry Ringrose toward his own excitement for tomorrow's showdown with the Bulls in Drumcondra [KO 5pm, TG4/Premier Sports/URC TV]. Responding to a question about the fitness of Hugo Keenan and Tadhg Furlong, who both miss out, Cullen named-checked Thomas Clarkson, Rabah Slimani, Jimmy O'Brien, Jack Boyle, Andrew Porter and Cian Healy, without shedding any further light on the two Ireland internationals. It was only when the conversation wandered toward the bigger picture stuff that Cullen really came to life. The Leinster boss was asked what the province had taken on board from the various defeats in finals and knock-out games over the last few seasons, and how much those experiences will inform the approach this time around. 'They're all individual games,' he replied. 'Every play-off game is a final as such, so we have played in lots of play-off games, whether they come in a quarter-final, semi-final or final. The group is learning all the time, young players come through and you are adding layers of experience. 'I think the way some of the questions are leading me it's like, whoever loses is a failure in this game. So, they are two good teams going at it. If you lose in a final are you classified as a failure? 'You can play your best game in the final. So both of these teams could play their best games of the season but unfortunately one of the teams has to lose. So has one of the teams, who has just played their best game, are they classified… They are classified as losers because they have lost (laughs) but are they failures? Advertisement 'You have really good teams going at it but you are guaranteed nothing. So you have to prepare the best you can with the time you have available to put in your best performance. I hope the group goes out and does itself justice because they're going out in front of so many of their friends, family, loved ones, supporters, people that turn up in the most random places during the course of a season to see us play.' Cullen spoke to the media in Croke Park. Laszlo Geczo / INPHO Laszlo Geczo / INPHO / INPHO Cullen was now in full flow and continued his answer to draw back memories of his first final win, a 2001 Celtic League defeat of Munster at Lansdowne Road. 'I remember literally when Eric Miller kicked Anthony Foley in the balls, going back to discipline, and thinking to myself, 'Oh, we're just a bit of trouble here!'' Near the end of the session, a question about the value Jordie Barrett has added to the group behind the scenes led to Cullen diving into the playing resources of Ireland and South Africa. 'You're always looking to the group. At the end of the day, things people talk about, like resources and all of that, we're producing players. You go to South Africa, they're a people of what, 64 million people? We're a country of how many people? 8 million? Where does rugby sit in terms of sport? Fourth. In South Africa it's number one. 'In terms of the rugby-playing population, what would they have? 12 times the amount of players we have registered maybe? 15? We're a drop in the ocean in terms of what we're up against. 'When we get the opportunity to bring in a player… Listen, it's fantastic to be able to do that. But it's off the back of all the support we actually get. It gets reinvested into the group ultimately because you can only bring so many players in because part of our job spec is to produce players to play for Ireland. 'We're very lucky to have Jordie. He has hopefully added in lots of different ways to the group because at the end of the day we're a tiny country in terms of playing population and we're up against a juggernaut team who we would have watched play Super Rugby and dismantle teams over the years, so we know we're in for a serious bloody challenge.' A follow-up question extended the Barrett point to include RG Snyman, Rabah Slimani, and Leinster-bound Rieko Ioane, leading to Cullen referencing the two team sheets in front him, focusing on the list of Bulls names. 'I feel like I'm distracted from the Bulls now,' he admitted. Leinster trained in Croke Park on Thursday afternoon. Laszlo Geczo / INPHO Laszlo Geczo / INPHO / INPHO 'Look through their team, there's a tonne of experience. I know Jake (White, Bulls head coach) was saying they're a young squad. I'm not sure what squad he's talking about, that's not a young group, that's not a young team. He was talking about that on Tuesday. Is he trying to lull us all into some false sense is he? A young group? Do you see a young group there? They're a serious experienced group we're up against and a team that has unbelievably high standards, that is used to winning, it's in their blood isn't it? 'Rugby, you're in South Africa and it's on morning, noon and night.' At that point a South African member of the media informed Cullen rugby might sit behind football in terms of popularity. 'Ah go away, will you?' Cullen laughed. 'Go away. Now you're not telling the truth, I know you're not telling the truth.' And with that he was off, closing a somewhat light yet occasionally tetchy half hour in the bowels of Croke Park.
Irish Times
11-06-2025
- Sport
- Irish Times
Gordon D'Arcy: Leinster should forget about silencing the critics - just listen to the clarion call
Success in sport is rarely a linear pathway. More often there is a fair bit of rerouting after venturing into some culs-de-sac or hitting the odd speed bump or wobble. In 2009 Leinster won the Heineken Cup for the first time. The following season we believed ourselves to be equally motivated and hungry to repeat the dose but found out that the theoretical and practical weren't quite aligned. We topped our pool, squeezed past Clermont Auvergne at the RDS before coming a cropper against Toulouse in a semi-final in La Ville Rose. To compound matters we lost the Celtic League Grand Final to a strong Ospreys team in our backyard, the RDS. I still haven't come to terms with Tommy Bowe's jersey grab that stopped me making a tackle. To make matters worse he was one of their two try-scorers that day. I remember standing on the pitch, the tension so thick you could almost bite it, our faces serious but we were definitely overcooked – mentally and physically – at the wrong point in the week on match day. READ MORE Shaun Beirne, an Australian outhalf, brought a wealth of experience to Leinster, as well as an appreciation that playing sport was to be enjoyed for the most part, not simply endured. He tried to lift the mood, with words that I can still recall. 'Lads, it's meant to be fun, remember that.' Just like that, the mood shifted, a couple of smiles emerged. The pressure didn't disappear, but we carried it differently, we learned to embrace it. A decade and a half later and Leinster find themselves on the cusp of another watershed moment as they prepare for Saturday's URC final against the Bulls at Croke Park. Few teams get to be choosy about silverware, so while Leinster might have preferred a fifth star to signify another European crown, it's not the time to be sniffy about winning a different trophy. The URC might not carry the romance or glamour of a Champions Cup, but it is a brutally tough competition to win, something that Leinster have come to realise over the past four years. They bear the scars of defeat. Saturday provides an opportunity to finish a turbulent season on a high note. Leinster's Joe McCarthy wins a lineout at the Leinster v Glasgow Warriors URC semi-final game at the Aviva Stadium last Saturday. Photograph: Dan Sheridan/Inpho Leinster's campaigns in Europe and domestically promised so much but that anticipation and expectation has been replaced by disparate emotions. Criticism has come, piled high – some of it fair, a lot exaggerated – while the vast majority has emerged from the strange, pixelated universe of social media, a space that doesn't reflect real-world sentiment as much as it claims to. It's a place where nuance dies and reaction rules. Unfortunately, it also tends to become the echo chamber for those that seek out kindred spirits in outlook and opinion. It doesn't matter how small or niche the vox pop. Leinster, for all their consistency and high performance over the last decade, have found themselves the victims of some serious schadenfreude in recent weeks. There are people, plenty of them, who get a bit of joy out of seeing Leinster fall short. That's part of the deal when you've set the bar so high. Winning isn't enough when you're expected to prevail. It's treated as if it's a bit ho-hum. But when you don't, critics are gleeful in their disparagement. What's interesting – and frankly refreshing – is that this time the Leinster players have clearly had enough of it. Joe McCarthy and Jack Conan both came out and made it known that the criticism is being heard, and that they're keen to answer back. [ Leinster driven by siege mentality ahead of URC showdown with Bulls Opens in new window ] Maybe what I've written has be taken in that same vein, but I loved hearing that. Too often the modern professional is in a verbal straitjacket, locked into a script, sanitised, safe, coached to be on-message. It's good to see some emotion every now and then. But, of course, calling it out brings its own pressure. Acknowledging the digital elephant in the room is one thing, responding to it with a performance is another. That's where Leinster stand now. They have to turn that siege mentality into a fuel source. While it's nice to hear them get a bit chippy, it's what they do on the UCD training pitches that matters most: how they've trained, talked, recovered, reset. The only energy worth carrying into this final is positive; relying on a faux edge from external criticism to me would not be enough to see them over the line. Jordie Barrett at Leinster Rugby Squad Training in UCD on Monday. Photograph: Morgan Treacy/Inpho I'm reminded of Joe Schmidt and what he drilled into us again and again: 'Control the controllables.' When you focus on yourself, all the positives that make you special as a group, it becomes really powerful as a galvanising force. There were genuine signs of life from a Leinster perspective last weekend in the win over Glasgow Warriors at the Aviva Stadium. A brilliant line from Dan Sheehan reminded us how dynamic he is with ball in hand. Tommy O'Brien brought energy and sharpness, while Ryan Baird was back to being that annoying, athletic pest every team hates playing against. And Jordie Barrett, slipping down the short side, showed exactly the kind of class that can change games in an instant. The performance wasn't complete, far from it. But there was shape, there was rhythm. The individual quality is still there. The opportunity now is to pull it all together, save the best performance for last, and answer the clarion call. [ Leinster class shines through in bruising URC semi-final that proved familiarity breeds contempt Opens in new window ] This week shouldn't be about silencing critics or snapping in half the proverbial stick people have been beating them with since the Champions Cup semi-final loss. That sort of external motivation burns out quickly in the heat of a match. It should be about turning inward, playing for each other, playing for the 16,000 or 17,000 supporters who keep showing up, even when the music's gone quiet. This is about giving them a day worth remembering. The Bulls are no pushovers, a power-based team with pace who will lick their lips at the idea of neutering the Irish province's set-piece launch pad. The Bulls scrum that tore through the Sharks pack will come for Leinster, every lineout contested, every ruck a dogfight. For the home side parity in these areas is a minimum requirement. Then it comes down to desire, individually and collectively. Leinster need a bit of that this week. Accept the pressure. Embrace it. And remember that they're good enough, if they believe it, to win this final on their terms, regardless of what the Bulls bring. Forget the external noise. Focus on the job, embrace the task with gusto. And enjoy it.
Irish Times
30-05-2025
- Business
- Irish Times
Matt Williams: Irish rugby should value the URC above the faltering Champions Cup
It is no crash that if we charted the rise of the Irish national team alongside the introduction of our indigenous provincial club competition, the two lines would almost overlap. In the amateur era, the AIL club competition was dominant in Ireland, with the provincial teams playing only a handful of representative games. This structure placed Irish rugby and the national team in an extraordinarily weak position during Ireland's transition to professionalism in the late 1990s. While I am a great supporter of our AIL clubs and believe that today, they are our rugby community's lifeblood, in the late 1990s the AIL structure spread Ireland's elite playing talent far too thinly across the many clubs. READ MORE It was the introduction of the original multinational provincial competition in 2001, titled the Celtic League, that created a meaningful season-long playing programme for our provincial teams, which triggered the sudden rise of Irish rugby. For over a century, South African provinces competed for the Curry Cup. Since 1904, the New Zealand provinces had fought over the Ranfurly Shield, which eventually evolved into their National Provincial Championship competition. In France, winning the Bouclier de Brennus in the French championship has always been regarded as the pinnacle of their sport. While in Australia, before the formation of the Brumbies in 1996, the contests between Queensland and New South Wales not only spilled a lot of blood but produced the Wallaby players who won the 1984 Grand Slam and the 1991 World Cup. When I arrived in Ireland 25 years ago, Irish rugby desperately required a meaningful, season long, provincial competition and the Celtic League delivered that. Today's United Rugby Championship is the grandchild of the Celtic League. Since its conception, it has morphed into a unique rugby polyglot competition containing an extraordinarily diverse array of teams from Italy, South Africa and the three Celtic nations. Extraordinarily, the URC spans both hemispheres. So it is being played simultaneously in summer and winter. In the same round, games can be played in the heat of a southern summer, at altitude on the South African Highveld, with another game being played on a cool crisp evening in Milan, or a contest under a torrential lashing from an Atlantic gale in Galway. Munster's Jean Kleyn training in Durban. Photograph: Steve Haag/Inpho Supporters who journey to follow their team could be sipping magnificent wine from the Constantia Valley while enjoying the culinary wonders of a South African Braai. Or perhaps sampling the delights of a local restaurateur's Italian Nonas recipe from northern Italy. Or the gastronomic joys that can be found along Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way or in the mist of the Scottish Highlands. So, with all of these unique points of difference, why does the Irish rugby community not hold the URC in far more prestige? Many in Ireland are clinging to the memories of an era that has now passed, wrongly obsessed with the bisected remains of the once great Heineken Cup. Today's Champions Cup is a competition that has been designed by British and French administrators to limit the possibility of Irish provincial teams' success. In creating the Round of 16, the Champions Cup has failed to ensure the most basic of sporting competition principles, that teams actually need to win games before they make the playoffs of the competition. After a rigorous 18 rounds of hard fought, high-quality home and away fixtures in the URC, the rigorous competition has required the Scarlets, who are the lowest qualifying team for the quarter-finals, to accumulate 48 competition points, made up of nine wins, a draw and 10 bonus points. The lowest qualifier in the URC is required to have a winning record of 50 per cent across an arduous 18 games. The Champions Cup provided Ulster with a place in the Round of 16 with a winning record of one win in four games. A 25 per cent gets you into a Champions Cup playoff. What a joke. The URC has created a competition structure of the highest quality, which has empowered Irish provinces with the opportunities to select the next generation of players like Jack Crowley and Sam Prendergast. While at the same time it has enabled our great players such as Peter O'Mahony, Jonny Sexton and Conor Murray to prolong their careers. They would not have enjoyed the longevity of playing for Ireland into their mid-thirties if their careers had been spent under the heel of owners in the Top 14 or the English Premiership. A general view of the URC trophy in Pretoria. Photograph: Steve Haag/Inpho There is no doubt that the addition of the South African teams has created logistical difficulties. Last week, Munster played at home. This week they are in Cape Town. Next week, they could remain in South Africa or be back in the north. That is problematic for all involved. However, the inclusion of the South African teams has lifted the standard of play inside the URC by a considerable margin. The quality of rugby that has been played across this season in the URC has been exceptionally high. In today's URC, winning away from home against Benneton, Glasgow or in Pretoria or Llanelli is exceptionally difficult. There is also no doubt that the defection of the South African teams to the URC has significantly weakened the standard of the Super Rugby competition. The South Africans would be welcomed back to the south in a Super Rugby heartbeat. Here we should take a leaf out of French rugby's play book. To the French, the Top 14 remains their pinnacle. Several French players have told me they regard winning the Top 14 above winning the World Cup. Even as Bordeaux are still celebrating their Champions Cup success, those players will tell you that trophy remains a significant step below the Bouclier de Brennus. Irish rugby needs to respect, nurture and value the URC above all else because it is the fuel that is powering rugby across the island.
Irish Times
30-05-2025
- General
- Irish Times
Rugby seasons just keep going, but to what end?
During a chance meeting recently with a former international rugby referee, one of his first comments about the game he officiated for many years was: 'I'm all rugby'd out.' Whether that was from the emotional toll of watching Leinster badly fall away from the Champions Cup or the fact that by late May two competitions were still running, he didn't say. But his point was well made. This 2025 rugby season has a never-ending feel to it, just as the 2024 season did. Both Leinster and Munster are still involved and if they win their next two matches, the quarter-final and semi-final of the United Rugby Championship (URC), they play the Grand Final on June 14th. READ MORE The teams kicked off the league on September 20th last year after preseason matches. The inaugural Celtic League in the 2000-01 season began on the weekend of August 17th and was completed by December 15th when Leinster beat Munster in front of 30,000 in Lansdowne Road. The following year the league final was in February, when Munster beat Neath in the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff. In its third year, the first following the formation of the five regional rugby sides in Wales, it was further elongated. Having previously been played as a pool stage followed by knockout rounds, it was re-engineered into a typical league system, based on home and away games only. That season the league began in September and was won by the Llanelli Scarlets when they beat Ulster in the last match on May 14th. By then the professional game was up and running and clubs needed income to pay their players. More attractive matches and a longer season was a sure way of generating income and rugby got what it has now, a mid-June final followed by an assortment of tours involving Ireland and Lions players as well as a women's World Cup in the UK, where the Irish team will play at least three pool matches against New Zealand, Japan and Spain. Leinster's Jordie Barrett signs autographs, a tiny part of his social load. Photograph: Ben Brady/Inpho Last year in July the Irish men's squad was in South Africa preparing for a Test series against the world champions more than a year after their World Cup training camp began and 11 months since they opened their warm-up World Cup campaign against Italy at the Aviva Stadium. For Irish fullback Hugo Keenan last season was longer than any before. Having entered Ireland's training camp on June 18th, 2023, he finished playing in the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris with the now defunct Irish Sevens team on July 27th. When the URC final is complete, if any of the 15 Irish players selected for the Lions by Andy Farrell are playing, they can look forward to quickly convening for a match against Argentina five days later in the Aviva Stadium to mark the beginning of the summer tour. It is the first time a Lions team will play in Ireland, which should ensure that any Irish player who competes in the URC final will want to perform in front of a home crowd. Irish player involvement would also generate more local interest. The Lions then travel to Optus Stadium in Perth in Western Australia to begin the nine-match tour through Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Adelaide, Brisbane again, Melbourne and Sydney. The tour will include three Test matches against Australia towards the end, with the final match against the Wallabies taking place on August 2nd in Sydney's Stadium Australia. While that is happening, the Irish team − shorn of its Lions players − will play two summer tour matches against Georgia and Portugal under interim head coach Paul O'Connell. First up on July 5th Ireland will play Georgia in Tblisi. The Georgians are 11th in the World Rugby rankings. A week later Ireland travel to Lisbon to face 18th-ranked Portugal. The British and Irish Lions will play in Ireland for the first time this year. Photograph: Ben Brady/Inpho Given the workloads you would wonder if rugby could learn from a comparable sport − American football. Through a 2025 collective bargaining agreement, the NFL announced a nine-week off season programme conducted in three phases. The first two weeks of the programme is limited to meetings, strength and conditioning, and physical rehabilitation. The second phase, which is three weeks long, involves on-field workouts that may include individual or group instruction and drills. Phase three is a four-week bloc in which teams may conduct a total of 10 days of live practice, where no contact is permitted. The regular season begins on the weekend following the first Monday of September and ends in early January, after which the season's playoffs begin, culminating in the Super Bowl in February. There has been a lot said and written about long seasons posing significant challenges for rugby players, impacting their physical and cognitive performance and increasing injury risk. But exactly how long a season should be has not been precisely defined and, anyway, in Irish rugby some players have longer seasons than others. In 2016 an International Olympic Committee scientific paper also showed that player loads are not just training and playing matches but include psychological load, travel loads, social and social media loads. The non-physical loads are difficult to measure but are another factor in determining what is appropriate. Come August, when this season finally ends, it may or may not have been too long. But by then it will not just be the former international referee who will be all 'rugby'd out'.
