The monster Australian rugby helped build: Leinster Lions return to haunt the Wallabies

The Age

16-07-2025

The British and Irish Lions' plans to defeat the Wallabies will rely on a system built in Dublin and shaped by a series of coaches steeped in Australian rugby.
Fourteen Lions have now been called up from Leinster, Ireland's dominant province. Coach Andy Farrell has long leaned on the team while coaching Ireland, and is now doing the same with the Lions. The Leinster machine, which surged under Michael Cheika and was then refined by now Wallabies coach Joe Schmidt, will be decisive in this series.
Five of the seven head coaches over the past 25 years at Leinster have had an Australian rugby background: Matt Williams, Gary Ella, Cheika, Schmidt and Matt O'Connor.
Former Waratahs coach Williams points out that he cannot take any of the credit for the later success at Leinster. That goes largely to Cheika, who won the club's first European title in 2009, and was followed by Schmidt in 2010 and 2012, before later success under former Ireland international Leo Cullen.
Williams arrived in Dublin in 2000 and was able to help infuse an Australian system into the club that continues to pay dividends to Ireland and the Lions today.
'The irony of this situation is that Leinster are benefiting from an Australian system,' Williams said.
'They simply run the Australian system, from schools, with seven or eight elite schools going into their senior team by playing the same rugby right through the system.
'It's exactly what Australian rugby did when it was at its zenith. You had seven or eight schools in Queensland and seven or eight schools in Sydney playing in a similar way, being influenced because schoolboy coaches were educated and influenced by the senior coaches, and how they played.