Stuart Lancaster tells Ciarán Kennedy about Leinster’s journey
Despite clocking up the air miles, Stuart Lancaster feels right at home with Leinster and his return to being a hands-on coach
OFF THE top of his head, Stuart Lancaster estimates taking somewhere in the region of 160 flights between Dublin and Leeds every year. Last week was the same as most others, a flurry of training pitches, airports and early rises.
He caught the 8am flight to Leeds on the morning after Leinster’s Heineken Champions Cup defeat of Wasps to spend a weekend with his family. On his two-day trip home, he rewatched the 52-3 hammering of Wasps while also finding time to squeeze in Bath v Toulouse in preparation for the Blues’ clash with the Top14 side today.
He flew back to Dublin Sunday night and spent Monday with the Leinster squad. Tuesday was a day off, but he and head coach Leo Cullen were still working away at Leinster’s UCD base.
After squad training on Wednesday he made a quick day trip home to Leeds on Thursday, flying back to Dublin on the 6.30am flight Friday morning and heading straight to UCD from the airport.
Leinster travelled to France yesterday, home this evening, and Lancaster will be back with his family for a day tomorrow, before returning for work on Tuesday to turn his attention to an away game against Treviso.
‘You put yourself in my wife’s situation, my daughter has now gone to uni’ so she’s left the family home, my son is in college in Hull and I’m in Dublin,’ Lancaster says, ‘so on Sunday night the three of us went our way and my wife stayed in this big house on her own with the dog, and she’s like “What am I supposed to do?”. It sounds like it’s not a big thing, but it actually is a big thing, I think.’
He understood the complications that working with Leinster would have on family life, but events earlier this season have brought that work-life balance into sharp focus.
His father, John, passed away, aged 78, a few days after suffering a cardiac arrest on the family farm. Having his family at Lansdowne Road when Leinster won the Pro14 Final in May provided one of their last special memories together.
It was the first time they were present at a must-win game since the 2015 World Cup, when he was England head coach.
‘None of us felt like it was his time,’ Lancaster explains. ‘It was tragic, tragic really for the family, and he was such a well-respected person in the community.
‘I remember I did the eulogy at the funeral and one of things I did talk about was that I was so pleased he was there in the Aviva at the end of that season because, he was... you talk about mentors in your life, he was my mentor, really, and he was there for me throughout the England job. He was there at the start, the middle and the end and he was a rock.
‘To see me smiling, was actually the moment you strive for as a coach and it’s all that drives me.’
At Leinster, Lancaster has rebuilt a reputation that was left in tatters following the 2015 World Cup, when England, the hosts, failed to get out of their pool following defeats to Australia and Wales.
Lancaster had enjoyed a mixed bag with the national team, winning 28 of 46 Test matches in charge. He stepped down from the job with five years left on a six-year contract.
‘I made myself a promise that wherever I would go next, I was going to make sure I was hands-on coaching again because I probably spent too much time away from doing that,’ he admits.
The next problem was finding employment, but, fortunately, Leo Cullen came calling. Cullen had endured a difficult first year as Leinster head coach and saw the need to get some experienced hands on deck.
Together, the two have forged a formidable partnership. In the two years since Lancaster’s arrival, the province has become Europe’s most exciting team; his influence is stamped all over the performances that delivered a Pro14 and Champions Cup double last season.
As Leinster have shot back to the top of the European game, Lancaster’s stock has followed a similar trajectory, with his name invariably linked to every job that becomes available in the English game. He is happy in his work, though. On his brief trip home last weekend, he dug out the old notes from training sessions during his five years as Academy manager at Leeds in the early 2000s – ‘this massive file of papers: decision-making drills, defence drills, contact skills, communication drills, whatever’. By the time the Leinster squad returned for training last Monday, he had those old routines dusted down and ready to go. It is easy to see why they squad enjoy working with him so much.
‘Every training session has a value in terms of learning. There would not be a training session that goes by that isn’t reviewed and isn’t shown back to the players for what we have done well and what we could do better,’ he remarks.
This season, the challenge is to keep the players hungry for success and both Cullen and Lancaster have made no secret of their faith in the abilities of the group.
‘I think we all agreed really that we had a lot of strength in depth coming through, and we needed to allow that to flourish, number one,’ he continues. ‘Number two, if you look at a company called GAIN LINE Analytics, it studies team cohesion, and the teams that gener-
ally stay at the top of any sport, if you look at baseball, American football or whatever, are the teams with the most cohesion in terms of continuity of selection and that learning that takes place when you spend time together.
‘If you are constantly chopping and changing your squad or your coaches all the time, I think it’s very difficult to develop that level of cohesion that it takes to win at the highest level.’
Whenever Lancaster does decide to pack his bags, he will have any number of jobs to choose from and, despite that difficult end to life as England head coach, he admits he could be persuaded to return to the world of international rugby.
‘I mean you would never say never to anything really because that is the pinnacle but, equally, you know, I’ve coached England 50 times, four years, some great experiences. But it is different.
‘I do genuinely enjoy the day-today coaching of club rugby, and even when the November internationals are coming on and we lose a lot of players who play for Ireland, I enjoy that period as well, because you’re coaching the younger players and the next generation who will come through and hopefully play for Leinster.
‘So it is different, international coaching, and there are long periods of time when you’re waiting for the next game, whereas at least if you lose with Leinster you have a game next week and you can try and put it right.
‘So we’ll see, we’ll see. I’m not sending my CV out.’