LEO: I HAD NO RIVALS FOR JOB

LEO Cullen reckons he got the nod for the Leinster hot-seat because no-one else fancied the difficult job at the time.

The former Heineken Cup-winning captain was appointed as Matt O’connor’s successor in 2015 and is still looking for his first silverware as head coach.

The province reached the PRO12 final in his first year, and the semi-finals last year as well as the last four of the Champions Cup.

“There’s always pressure, all the time,” he said last night.

“There’s always two strands to the job – there’s making sure we’re good in the future, pushing a bigger picture environment, making sure we’re competitive, which we’re getting closer to.

“If you look at it, I think the reason I got the job, was nobody else wanted to take the challenge on, where you’re missing 16 players from the World Cup, it turned out to be 19, that’s a difficult challenge – what coach wants that?

“There’s different pressure. Look at Chelsea, they won the league last season, and (Antonio) Conte was probably under no pressure when he was coming in after the season they’d had.

“Now he’s probably under huge pressure because they over achieved.

“That’s the thing – does the pressure come off because he won the league? No, it probably intensifies.

“It’s the same pressure as always with Leinster now – that’s the pressure we’d always put ourselves under as players. But that’s welcome, because if we didn’t have that we could be languishing down the table.

Rob Kearney will play for Leinster for the first since January when he lines out in Friday’s pre-season friendly against Gloucester.

Dave Kearney could also return after training at the start of the week, while Jamie Heaslip is also edging his way back towards full fitness having been out since missing the 6 Nations win over England with back problems.