LAN’ KISS GOODBYE

STUART Lancaster will leave Leinster at the end of the season, bringing down the curtain on a second reel in life he couldn’t have imagined.

Labelled a rugby pariah in his homeland in 2015, his crime and punishment was as mapped as a Dostoyevsky plot — unemployment, downsizing the family home, child taken from private school.

One red-topped newspaper reckoned England being knocked out of their own-hosted Rugby World Cup in 2015 one match before the pool stages had even ended was the single-worst RWC performance in history.

One broadsheet informed Lancaster he had cost the UK economy €15 billion.

But for all his ‘crimes’ it was the penitence, resolve and rebirth that would prove spectacular for this son of Cumbria, a man who assumed his post2015 future was in teaching.

There had been an element of dash in his capture by Leinster too; some believe Leo Cullen picked up the phone to stave off having a David Nucifora-chosen assistant put in behind him.

A hand-picked Nucifora assistant had done for Anthony Foley, a man with a very similar CV to Cullen, at Munster all too recently.

But Cullen, astutely, had made a call to a man of enticing and beguiling loyalty who’s seven years in exile from his native land would rekindle all sorts of interest from preying, jealous, eyes.

Stock

Lancaster says he was approached by numerous English Premiership clubs as the seasons rolled around.

Given his stock in late-2015 this may seem preposterous; but given how highly he was perceived following a softly-softly slot at Leinster the wonder is, given the cash they splash, they didn’t succeed.

Rather Lancaster will fly to France nest season, to Racing looking for their very own Napoleon to come from exile .

The news, long leaked, but confirmed yesterday, saw Lancaster volunteer to take Leinster’s Monday media duties.

Perhaps he understand the newspaper daily’s beat is the first draft of history.

But there is, too, the fact he also ‘volunteered’ for a Monday call in October 2017 when Rob Andrew, in a book preview serialised in a Sunday paper, savaged him calling him a ‘dictator’ who needed to be ‘saved from himself’.

Lancaster admitted Andrew had blindsided him, he hadn’t known his former RWC2015 assistant was about to go nuclear but retained his usual dignity through the session.

Yesterday, though...

I’d never seen him as nervous; he was uneasy in the chair; fiddled a bit with his wedding ring. He wanted to explain.

Lancaster loves the Leinster fans, they love him; Lancaster is proud of the Leinster players, is Cullen’s friend, the relationships are reciprocated.

This departing assistant once worked as a PE teacher and he understands the principal’s office, of having to go and explain — Cullen, in this is his principal, the players and fans his secondary regret.

Nervous telling Leo?

“I think you’re mistaking my swinging on a chair for nervousness,” he tells Starsport a little defensively and it’s a giveaway.

“I’m not saying it’s not a big day. It is a big decision for me. Telling Leo first up, he was the one I needed to be honest with early enough.

Known

“I felt bad for Leo to be honest. He’s known for a while because I was never not going to tell him the truth.

“What was disappointing was the fact that it broke early and then he had to deal with it, whereas I would much rather I would have been the one to deal with it because it was my decision. It put him in a difficult position.”

Remember, this LancasterRacing deal started brewing last June — and that’s about the time Cullen was just about coming to terms with similar Felipe Contepomi and Denis Leamy decisions.

“What Leo said was what he believes, there is a natural evolution in teams anyway. He’s seen it in his career as a coach, and as a player as well. We all have. Nothing ever stays the same.

“So it will be a sad day when I go for sure. It’s very early in the season. We’ve Ulster on Friday.

“I will be glad when today is done and we can get back to that. For me there will still be little bits in the background but it will just be driving on and driving on to try to get success with Leinster.”

If the big question is why has Lancaster done this, the big answer is that he has done his time, did the bird, the seven-year porridge with one to come, served the sentence and is a deserving, free, man.

“There were other opportunities over the last few years, definitely. Some of them were when I was in contract asking, ‘did I want to leave

Leinster’?

Finish

“I guess the challenge would be to go outside my comfort zone and go to an environment I have never coached in before and to try and become there.

“But I think for the demands of my own career, to not finish with regrets, ‘there was such and such and I shudda done that’ that was probably the biggest driver that in the end convinced me to the opportunity.”

Lancaster is going at the end of the year but he hasn’t left any unpaid bills behind.

Go with god and may god go with you, as comedian Dave Allen might have said — albeit Cullen may have wished he thought of it first. s u c cessful