Leo Cullen slams ‘wild' €17m Leinster budget claims after Champions Cup heartbreak against Northampton

The Irish Sun

05-05-2025

LEO CULLEN has described guesstimates of Leinster's budget as 'wild'.
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Leinster lost a thrilling Champions Cup semi-final to Northampton at Aviva Stadium on Saturday
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Leinster boss Leo Cullen has slammed 'wild' €17m budget claims after another European exit
Since beating Racing 92 in 2018, Leinster have been runners-up four times, as well as losing two semi-finals and one quarter-final.
Previously, Irish sides have pleaded the poor mouth in relation to English and French clubs but the landscape has changed.
The salary cap in the Premiership is €7.5m and is €10.7m in the Top 14.
There is no such limit in the URC and the outlay by the provinces is never released but, clearly, with the overwhelming majority of centrally-contracted players, plus high-profile imports such as Jordie Barrett, RG Snyman and Rabah Slimani, Leinster is in a position to compete.
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But
Cullen said: 'It is wild. That's miles off. Unfortunately, people can write whatever they want.
'As we know, the system here is a little more complex than in other countries but we don't have a published salary cap. I don't think it's a conversation for this moment in time.
'I've seen some of those figures and they're just not accurate. How do you correct people who write things that aren't true in the current media?'
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Clearly, though, Leinster's expenditure is significant and Cullen bristled when asked if one
Cullen said: 'We all want to be more successful but we need to understand how difficult these competitions are to win as well, that's a judgement isn't it?
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'It's painful but all we can focus on is doing everything we possibly can to be successful in what's next.
'I can't, unfortunately, comment on how you get judged on over a long period of time.
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"If you wind the clock a bit further back, if you asked us what in 2009, where are we sitting now, 2025, in 16 years' time you'll have, what, four Champions Cups? In the previous 14 years we had doughnut.
'It depends again how far you go back with some of those questions.
'If you ask every team in the competition they would have loved to have won more.
'The pain that we're in at the moment. It's a horrible feeling for everyone in there, I can assure you.
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'But what do we do? Dust ourselves off and go again. We prepare for the next couple of weeks. We've got two URC games.
'You have to give Northampton credit. They processed the disappointment of losing the semi-final last year and got better. They won the Premiership and they're on the way to a final this year so we need to have the same mindset now.'
In reality, the
McCarthy said: 'There was no point in the last 10 minutes that I thought we weren't going to win.
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"We were getting good opportunities, it felt like it was going to come. Even that last tap penalty, we'd scored two tap penalties.
'The lads are so hungry in the dressing room. It's been a few years we've been trying to win it.
"It probably felt like it was going to be our year again, we feel like that every year but it's such a driven bunch of guys.
'They'll be bouncing in on Monday, trying to get better, trying to put in good performances in the URC.
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'I think it's hugely important. To win a bit of silverware would probably give a bit of confidence to the group, a bit of feel-good, because I think if you go again with no silverware there's a bit more pressure on, I don't know, maybe you doubt yourself a bit.
'We don't need outside pressure, there's a lot of pressure on ourselves to try to win a trophy so we'll be gunning now for the URC 100 percent.'