Leinster striving to get back to the summit

Brendan Fanning

Cullen’s men will be hard to topple as duel with Toulon comes into view

Leinster players celebrate last night’s win over Munster. Photo: Ramsey Cardy

Leinster players celebrate last night’s win over Munster. Photo: Ramsey Cardy

Warren Gatland

Leinster players celebrate last night’s win over Munster. Photo: Ramsey Cardy

March 28 2021 02:30 AM

In this gig it is advisable to make your emotional investments in an offshore account. Or at least one you’re not writing about on a regular basis. We remember Joe Schmidt, early in his days on this sod, expressing amazement that not everyone in the press box was a card carrying member for one of the four proud provinces, and all singing Phil Coulter’s ballad in green.

That is not to say that reporting on games you hoped would lean one way can leave you flattened when the wind changes direction. Two examples stand out.

The first was from the old Lansdowne Road on a sweltering April day in 2004. It started with a little insight to Wasps’ state of mind, as, through the railings of Jury’s Hotel, we caught a bit of their lineout walk-through in the carpark, before going around the corner to take on Munster in the Heineken Cup semi-final. There was a good 90 minutes to kick-off and Lawrence Dallaglio was wired. Playing a bit to the crowd, but wired all the same.

By day’s end we were in a tent, cleared of corporates and doubling as a media centre, in the carpark behind the West Stand. Warren Gatland was at the top table and you’d have needed a chisel to make any impression on his smile from ear to ear. He had just been asked, by a veteran Limerick rugby writer, if he had any sympathy for Munster, who had just suffered yet another near miss in a thrilling knockout tie. There was a bubble above Gatland’s head, in which the following question could clearly be deciphered.

Are you taking the piss?

Gatland managed to not articulate that verbatim but made it clear this was about Wasps, and him, and not Munster. Sacked by Ireland only three and a half years earlier, it was a special moment for him. In these pages that morning we had referred to his sacking from Ireland involving his falling asleep at the wheel. He took time out to challenge that one too. Fair enough, as full circles go this was perfectly drawn.

We left Lansdowne Road that day wondering if Munster would ever make the breakthrough. They looked doomed when losing Ronan O’Gara with a torn hamstring, yet recovered to lead by 10 with as many minutes left. So, beaten finalists in 2000; semi-finalists in 2001; beaten finalists in 2002; semi-finalists in 2003; and then semi-finalists in 2004. Never mind the two lost finals, the aggregate margin of defeat over the three semi-finals was seven points. When Anthony Foley talked about bitterness being a motivator you could see the depth of the well.

The second example is more recent, but from the same patch of land. Six months ago Saracens came to town looking to make it back-to-back European Champions Cup wins over Leinster. They were at the peak of their powers in winning the final in St James’s Park in 2019. Roll on to September 2020 and we were still getting used to the antiseptic environment of a virtually empty stadium.

Over the previous two weekends there Leinster had seen off Munster and Ulster in the closing stages of the Guinness PRO14. There was something noticeably different about the noise levels in the Saracens game though. They hardly had any more numbers on site than Munster or Ulster but it was like a rerun of the Wasps lineout drill in Jury’s car park from 2004: combative and vocal and loaded with certainty about the outcome.

Whatever was up for grabs that day Saracens took it with both hands. It left Leinster in a spin. It left those of us who write about Leinster struggling for context as well. How could an organisation that could run tours of its Academy as a little earner look so pale and wan when set against the dark destroyers from Barnet?

A couple of weeks later we happened across Leo Cullen at the temperature check point in the RDS. It was a Friday night, the opening round of the 2020/21 Guinness PRO14. Against the Dragons. He sighed the sigh of a man who would cheerfully have gone out onto Anglesea Road to play with the traffic, if there had been any. If you had told him that parked right outside Gate D was a time travel machine you could have named your price.

Everything for Leinster since then has been about getting back on top of the European podium. Their opponents on Friday evening, Toulon, were at Lyon last night, one place below them in seventh in the Top 14. Staying in the top six is the priority for a club whose days as kings of Europe coincided with Leinster’s period of pause post Joe Schmidt. The fallout from that Lyon tie will shape what we see from Patrice Collazo’s side next weekend, but Leinster will be hard to back.

The following afternoon Ugo Mola’s Toulouse will run out at Thomond Park, hoping this is the first of four games to reunite them with a title last won in 2010. Unlike Toulon they are tooled up for whatever the calendar throws at them. Mola is on a European mission as well as a domestic one. They have handy tools at their disposal: a raft of quality players and a clear idea of what they’re about.

They could readily have stumbled at the first hurdle, against Ulster. You’ll remember how Cheslin Kolbe stepped Jacob Stockdale for the winning try that night in the Kingspan. As Stockdale was shrugging his shoulders to suggest it was beyond the power of man to stop this character, Toulouse outhalf Thomas Ramos gave him a look that said he agreed. Hard to argue with that. Harder not to get caught up in it.