‘The guys are gutted because they know there’s more in them’ – Cullen

Leo Cullen: 'We need to bottle up that kind of pain'. Photo: Sportsfile

Ruaidhri O'Connor Twitter

May 03 2021 02:30 AM

For the third successive season, Leinster finish with a Guinness PRO14 title and European disappointment.

Their dominance in one competition is total, their struggles against the bigger beasts on the Heineken Champions Cup circuit are evident.

While he sees similarities between yesterday’s loss at the Stade Marcel Deflandre and the 2019 and 2020 defeats to Saracens, their coach Leo Cullen believes his team had their chances to win yesterday and didn’t take them.

Now, he wants his players to learn that lesson ahead of next season.

“You are coming up against very good teams, it is important to note,” Cullen said.

“They are hard to chase the game against. That is the big thing, making sure you nail your opportunities in these games.

“The Saracens game, the quarter-final (in 2020), we started so slowly; you think the Saracens final (in 2019), there were big moments when we don’t quite nail some chances in that game, so yes, there are some parallels there.

“But it’s always evolving, and you have different players coming in and you have just got to go through some of that pain.

“Jeepers, from my own experience as a player we had so many painful memories leading into Leinster being successful for the first time in this tournament.

“You get to a semi-final, it’s such fine margins – particularly away from home – a couple of calls over the course of the game don’t quite go our way and suddenly the game can get away from you.

“But, that’s off the back of the big, powerful players that teams have.

“When you come away to France, that’s what teams have. They’re heavily resourced, the set-ups are impressive, they’re big operations with big physical men who can do damage.

“They’re recruiting, bringing in All Blacks, we know all these things.

“We need to get all the little bits right on the day. There were plenty of things we did get right, but we didn’t get enough right.

“Particularly at the start of the game, that’s when we had the chance to take the game away from La Rochelle.

“Because then if they are chasing the game it has a very, very different complexion.

“It’s hard chasing the game against them because of the physical players you’re running into, the game becomes very difficult because they go very aggressive at the contact area.

“Nailing some of those chances, particularly at the start, was so, so important. Unfortunately, we weren’t good enough to do that today. The guys inside are gutted because they know there’s more in them.

“That’s the big thing for us, making sure we nail all the moments in these big games.”

Cullen wants his team to learn from the experience and bounce back.

“A huge amount of effort has gone into this season. It continues to roll on. We have a game next week now against Connacht. We just need to try and dust ourselves off and get ready for that now,” he said.

“Particularly for the younger guys, that image as we pulled into the ground – that sea of supporters and what it means to the club and to the town here.

“We need to understand that because we need to bottle up that kind of pain that certain people are feeling inside there.

“A huge amount of players experience a semi-final in Europe for the first time so we just need to be better for the next opportunity or next window when we get to this stage of the competition because it’s so hard winning away in France in a semi-final but it’s something that we have done in the past.

“Everything’s really deflated.”