Handling the pressure, not peaking, key to Leinster's hopes

Irish Examiner

2 days ago

It all started this week three years ago. Thirteen days had passed since a late La Rochelle try in Marseille deprived Leinster of a fifth Champions Cup title and now the Bulls were in Dublin for a URC semi-final at the RDS.
Incredible as it may seem looking back, Jake White's side were 14/1 outsiders, but then they had never won on Irish soil before. That changed by the time they left with a deserved one-point win having outplayed their hosts for much of the game in Ballsbridge.
Leinster had reason to rue some of the officiating, but they let slip a series of prime attacking positions through their own errors. The bottom line was that ambitions of a double had evaporated into emptiness inside two torturous weeks.
'It's going to be pretty dark in there, isn't it?" said Rob Kearney on Premier Sports. The TV cameras had already zoomed in on the Leinster coaching box at the final whistle and they illuminated a room dominated by a shocked silence.
Still, there was no reason to think that this was some sign of things to come. A harbinger of doom. When Leinster regrouped for pre-season they would have felt sure of the fact that amends could be made inside the next nine months.
They weren't. They still haven't.
The province approaches Saturday's latest URC semi-final, against Glasgow at the Aviva Stadium, having lost another pair of Champions Cup deciders and a last four tie to Northampton Saints. Two of them were in their own back yard.
That Bulls defeat in 2022 has since been followed by another pair of exits at the very same stage, Munster making them pay for fielding a far-from-full-strength side at the RDS and then the Bulls having their number in Pretoria 12 months ago.
By now it feels as if the province has tried everything and anything. The recruitment policy has been changed, there is a new No.10 in the cockpit, and Jacques Nienaber has replaced Stuart Lancaster as the strategic mastermind.
If the tactical shift towards a more rugged defensive approach has left some cold then the real wonder is in how Nienaber has been in situ for three tight knockout losses having made such a habit of squeezing through such contests with the Springboks.
So his take on the idea of 'peaking' is worth digesting.
'You don't peak. It's not that you try and peak. You have to handle the pressure of the game. It's not about peaking. It's just, listen, you have to handle the pressure of a knockout game because there is a lot more pressure.
'If you think South Africa played in the World Cup and lost to Ireland, yeah it's bad, but it's not defining. Knockouts is defining. You can be as good as you want to and play as brilliant rugby as you want to in the league stage of the competition.
'Where it counts is you just have to make sure you are a little bit better than the team you play against on that specific day of a knockout game. We must just be better than Glasgow this weekend. That's all. Like last weekend, we just had to be a little bit better than Scarlets.'
This is the theme Leinster are pushing this week. Forget the path taken, the quality involved, or the margin of victory. All that matters now is getting over the lien this week and next. The question is whether their current form and mindset will be enough for that to happen.
There has been talk of lessons, a realisation that the rugby being played in the playoffs is different gravy to the 18 rounds of URC action or the pool stages of the Champions Cup. Glasgow learned that lesson last year, Munster the year before.
Both clubs claimed the URC title by virtue of away wins in the last two games, which should make the Sharks feel good about themselves as they face the Bulls in Loftus Versfeld this weekend, and the Warriors are a very clear and present danger here.
Leinster have won ten of the last 12 meetings stretching back to, and including, the PRO12 final at Celtic Park in May of 2019, and that dominance is even greater in Dublin where they have won all six and scored 276 points against 64 conceded.
But, again, none of that matters in a semi-final.
'If you think back to last year, they went to Munster in Thomond Park,' said Nienaber. 'It's a tall order to win in Thomond Park and they did that. Then it's an even taller order to fly over, go to altitude, play the Bulls, which we struggled with.
'We got knocked out the week before by the Bulls. They went over there and got a result. The same thing with Munster going to South Africa [in 2023] and doing a job on the Stormers. It's a completely different game.'