Leinster are one win from glory, one loss from the sky falling on their head

Irish Daily Mirror

14 hours ago

Leinster are in the dock at Croke Park, on the northside too, standing accused of not being able to lift anything.Specifically that having repeatedly got on-site during four Champions Cup and three URC raids they emerged empty-handed, without any of the silverware or gold medals on offer.
Leinster, the club, may have seven of the 10 letters in the word larcenists but, damningly, none of the sticky fingers associated.
Welcome to the 2025 URC Grand Final where if Leinster come up empty-handed again, there will be blood on the coaches' dance floor and somebody - either the most successful club coach in Irish history or a double-RWC winning one - will be job-hunting.
This is, remember, a club with a dozen 2025 Lions and, notwithstanding Caelan Doris, Will Connors, Robbie Henshaw being injured and ex-Lion Cian Healy retiring, have another dozen players on the Ireland summer tour.They are bolstered by a close to €1m package funding All Black Jordie Barrett, double-Rugby World Cup winner RG Snyman and French propping legend Rabah Slimani.A Leinster who may catch all the plaudits, be greatly admired and much feted from near and far, do well off their budget when it is compared to Top 14 clubs and have a wonderful, working, pathway/Academy system...But who, come the pointy end of the season, have repeatedly dropped the ball in semi-finals and finals. It's a mystery.
Call Hercule Poirot even if he is Belgian, phone Humphrey Bogart's private eye Philip Marlow, or send for Sherlock Holmes or, how about, his now much-feted teenage sister Enola Holmes if you like and ask them to ask what they make of the puzzle.
A good place fore them to start maybe wondering whether Leinster are suffering from being 'Club Ireland'.
There is little disguising the Leinster collective having morphed into the Ireland World Cup/Six Nations team with former Leinster Academy man Tadhg Beirne and three southern hemisphere products operating out of Connacht in Bundee Aki, Mack Hansen and Finlay Bealham tagged on.If this translates to, intentionally or not, their seeing club rugby as a way of getting fit and peaking for international rugby then God only knows how they are mentally juggling Leinster-Ireland-Lions.
The sheer joy of the Northampton players when they defeated Leinster in the recent Champions Cup semi-final carried over into the after-match proceedings - they were verily bouncing off the walls.
A joy rarely seen from Leinster wins these days, there seems to be an auto-pilot in the mix. Whether they celebrate Leinster wins the way they celebrate Ireland wins is worth asking.
Leinster assistant coach Jacques Nienaber is the most celebrated Defence Coach in the world. He was Rassie Erasmus's second-in-command for the 'Boks RWC 2019 win and Head Coach for the 'Boks RWC 2023 win.He famously once said his coaching system would take 14 games to bed-in but this was at the start of last season.Now if you believe there is no such thing as a 'good' missed tackle or if, being less didactic, believe there is a problem with repeated missed tackles and that there is a certain amount required to be made in each game, then don't get into an argument with Nienaber.
Leinster's three quarter-line for this evening's game has Tommy O'Brien who makes 58 percent of his tackles, Ringrose 51 per cent, Barrett 74 percent and James Lowe's 40 percent.
This evening's full-back Jimmy O'Brien has a 79 percent tackle completion rate and he may be needed not least as the much criticised defensively Sam Prendergast brings a 50 percent completion rate to the party (Ross Byrne's is 88 percent!).There is a potential explanation of the Northampton loss in there. The Saints had a winger score a hat-trick, a flanker going blind-side and skating past the tackles. 37 points is a helluva lots of points to concede, to have to overhaul in a knockout game. At the same time apologies, that's a negative interpretation as to how rugby should be played.Ringrose is a 2025 Lion, the best attacking no13 in Europe if not the world and he will be playing outside the best no12 in the world.Lowe's attacking threat is ever-present, not least for his ability to keep the ball alive with inventive, clever offloads and his auxiliary kicking is a feature while Prendergast has a prodigious eye for attack.That's a set of bigger-picture figures that have to be balanced, weighed up with, say, missing every second or third tackle.But they are figures suggest that firstly Leinster are flat-track bullies, certainly against the bottom six/seven/eight URC outfits. And secondly, given their quality players can hold onto the ball, that they are very difficult to overhaul once they are ahead.Consider this: The IRFU allowed a failed Ireland RWC 2019 to be glossed over when their official report blamed 'Performance Anxiety' - possibly the most infantile concept since nappies.
Professional sportsmen are paid to 'perform' and on the back of those performances are in a salary meritocracy. Perform well, get more money, get picked again. How did the Performance Anxiety XV get to the top of the log in the first place?But if there is such a thing as Performance Anxiety, Leinster must have it not so much inadvertently picked as a virus but from the idea of it actually existing. Once you convince yourself it exists, it is too handy a crutch, an easy explanation.
A little more practical self-scrutiny might help. Memo to Leinster committee in advent of losing this final, buy the players mirrors for Christmas so they can look at themselves in it.
Because, make no mistake, repeated failure to win a tournament is building and building and contrary to accepted common sense. The players are not bad players, the collective have gotten it right most of the time and are able to get themselves into position to win trophies.As a result the spotlight is turning more and more on coach Leo Cullen and assistant Nienaber.Is there something fundamentally wrong, not so much with selection based on empirical evidence that the player should have the jersey, but a flawed understanding of their individual make-ups in pressure situations.Cullen is, for instance, under IRFU/Andy Farrell instruction that, once both are fit, to pick James Ryan and Joe McCarthy ahead of Snyman; he has more leeway with Barrett but still had to fill a quota for the Henshaw-Ringrose pairing.
Moreover Cullen was told that the onus was on him to pick Prendergast this season, to bring him on with Ireland in mind, have him ready for the November series and first-choice by the Six Nations.It is unlikely Cullen could have jettisoned Prendergast for the final had he wanted to but it is telling Ross Byrne is on the bench in a five-three split and not Ciaran Frawley or Jamie Osborne in a six-two.Cullen has the option to withdraw Prendergast if he wishes; if this isn't going well in the first-half, it will be a measure of this current management's decisiveness as to when they start to change the pattern.Because as it mightn't need Poirot, Marlow, Sherlock and Enola to detect, that really would be the point where the sky was falling on their heads.If that's a bit panicky, premature, apologies as Leinster take the field as massive favourites to win a game against a Bulls side who are an extremely blunt instrument and have very little matching the skill-levels and experience the Blues possess.
Leinster can be backed at 1/5 - and most likely can only defeat themselves. Performance Anxiety, you ol' ambusher...