Knockout experience has heightened the senses for Van der Flier
IT’S hard to believe just how new all this is to Josh van der Flier. While last season was a breakthrough campaign for the Leinster back row, the province’s European shortcomings meant that the April 1 Champions Cup quarterfinal defeat of Wasps was the Ireland international’s first taste of knockout rugby. Now, Van der Flier finds himself one match away from a European final, and admits these are the highs he dreamed of as he fought his way through the ultra-competitive Leinster Academy. ‘100 per cent, yeah. These are the games you’re looking forward to for weeks,’ he says. ‘When I was younger, everyone was looking forward to watching them, fans were really excited to see them and of course, as a player you really want to be playing in them. ‘The Wasps game was my first professional knockout game, so it was all kind of new and it was pretty incredible. I was kind of pinching myself to be on the pitch and playing in those games.’ He won’t be the only one, as Leinster have reached this stage with an impressive mix of youth and experience, the likes of Joey Carbery, Garry Ringrose and Dan Leavy mixing effectively with stalwarts such as Johnny Sexton, Sean O’Brien and Isa Nacewa. And Van der Flier is confident Leinster’s young stars can step up to the mark once again in what promises to be a whitehot atmosphere in Lyon’s Stade Matmut de Gerland. ‘I think we just have to look at it like another game,’ he continues. ‘If someone is taking a kick they can’t be thinking “Oh this a semi-final, this is a massive kick”, try play as well as you can and almost forget that it’s a semi. Use the fact that it’s a semi-final to motivate you but not to put you off your game, I suppose that’s the best way to look at it.’ It’s a far cry from the same stage last season, when Van der Flier and his Leinster teammates watched on from a distance as things got serious in the Champions Cup, having only won one of their Pool games. One of the biggest factors in their return to the top table has been the introduction of senior coach Stuart Lancaster, and Van der Flier says the former England boss has had a major influence. ‘He’s been brilliant. He’s a really good motivator, he takes a lot of the training sessions along with Leo, running the phase play and that sort of thing, and he knows his stuff. ‘He’s hugely experienced and is quite a humble guy as well and what I’ve been really impressed with about him is that he
wouldn’t be saying, “this is my way of doing things and this is how you’re going to do it”. ‘He’d be very open to look at what New Zealand did here, and maybe we should try and bring that in. He’d be very open to how we can improve and the whole coaching staff have been brilliant at that, at not being stubborn and being open to new ideas and new concepts and trying to improve the whole time.’ One of those new concepts has been the idea of playing ‘unstructured’ rugby, an approach that Lancaster has brought in which allows Leinster to play with more freedom and creativity than they would have previously. ‘I suppose it’s working on creativity, being able to come up with stuff without having the coach telling you exactly what you have to do for the next 15 phases.’ The last time the Blues faced Clermont, following Leinster was simply a hobby for the UCD student, but he no longer sees the French giants as super-human bruisers that swat away all before them. ‘Watching them when I was younger, you’d be like “Oh, there’s nothing you can do about it”, they’re strong. ‘But when you’re playing (as a professional) you kind of know ways — if we put pressure on them then they won’t be able to do what they can do, so you use more of a practical way of dealing with them rather than “this is what they are good at, they’re going to beat us in that area”. ‘It is the finest of details, as you’ve seen from those previous games [between Leinster and Clermont]. So from doing video review or looking at the opposition and what weaknesses they might have, if we can get the tiniest of tiniest margins then that could be the difference in the games.’