The Cullen way gives us hope for coaching in Ireland
Davy always one of the good guys in nation’s heart
THE victory itself is not talked about any more, mainly because the game’s infamy was built on a winger being told to bite down on a capsule of fake blood that had been purchased in a joke shop in Clapham, but nine years ago in the Stoop, in London, Leinster as a team banged its fist on a table for the first time.
It’s also long forgotten that the man behind that action was Leo Cullen — the man with the fist, not the man coming out of the joke shop.
In a game made up of inches and defensive lines courageous beyond all expectation, two Felipe Contepomi penalties in the first half were just enough in a 6-5 win over Harlequins, as Leinster finally lived up to the meanness epitomised by their coach, Michael Cheika.
The essential difference between the two teams was in the lineout. There, Leinster lorded it. Long before the finish, it was men against boys.
And Cullen, with his usual carefully measured demeanour, got each and every call exactly right, all afternoon long.
Though of course in a game labelled ‘Bloodgate’, there were more interesting and dramatic happenings to be talked about in the hours and days, and then weeks and months, after that Heineken Cup quarter-final.
Leinster lifted their first Heineken Cup at the tailend of that spring, and, as captain, Cullen asked his Aussie scrum-half Chris Whitaker to hang back and join him as he walked up on to the podium at the very end to lift the trophy. They lifted it high together. In 2011, Cullen told Shane Horgan and Gordon D’Arcy he wanted them to lift the same trophy with him, and 12 months after that he had a word in Shane Jennings’ ear before the trophy presentation. Jennings shared the great honour with his team captain, not that many remember. Cullen has always done things in his mostly hardworking career extremely quietly. And that is perfectly befitting someone who has never stopped believing himself to be a student of the game. This afternoon, like with the three Heineken Cups from the past, he has one hand on the back of the Leinster team that is massively fancied to see off Scarlets. He’s the team’s head coach, but
he’s sharing the duties and the honours (just as he did as a player) with former England boss, Stuart Lancaster.
And, like in the past, if Leinster win this one, and take care of either Munster or Racing 92 in the final next month, we all know that Cullen will receive far less than his due when the lavish praise gets tossed about the place.
MORE than anyone else, Cullen has shaped Leinster into the team that stands before us this afternoon. He has also had such a substantial role in determining the personality and culture at work in the RDS, and this understanding of what Leinster should become began the year before he was named team captain.
Back in 2008, in Cullen’s first year back home after a spell with Leicester Tigers, he watched Brian O’Driscoll lift the Celtic League trophy, and do so all on his lonesome.
For starters, once he was appointed captain after O’Driscoll, Cullen decided that that would never happen again. And so it has been, though with Leinster agonisingly close in the eyes of most fans and neutrals to becoming the No1 team in Europe once again, we know the natural response from us as a nation will be to thank, first and foremost, Lancaster. It’s what we do.
It’s how we think and, indeed, the IRFU has encouraged us all to fully believe that only gentlemen from Australia and New Zealand and South Africa — and now England — can be trusted to bring out the very best in us as a rugby nation.
The national team and three of our four provinces are trusted to foreigners, while Michael Bradley is in Italy, Bernard Jackman is now in Wales having been in France, and Declan Kidney has popped his head back up in the air, in England.
Three of the most experienced Irish coaches have been unwanted here.
It’s peculiar how the sight of so many foreign coaches does not have us decrying a wobbling sense of nationhood in the same way foreign players beng handed green shirts leaves some amongst us maddeningly itchy.
Maybe we should worry more about our near-total dependency on Joe Schmidt, and Johann Van Graan and Jonno Gibbes, and Kieran Keane and whoever is flown in to replace him some day soon.
In our Irish game, Cullen stands alone as an Irish coach. In Munster there are a cluster of Irishmen running around Van Graan and hanging on his every word, but after the disappointment of Anthony Foley’s fast demotion, and the tragedy of his passing so shortly after, it does not seem likely that Munster will place their trust in an Irishman any time soon.
If Leinster win today, and win again in the final, we’ll wait to see who Isa Nacewa chooses to help him with the lifting.
The Leo Cullen way will continue. Because this Leinster team, more than anyone else, is built to think and act, and behave, in his likeness.