Halfway through the Champions Cup group sprint already and Leinster are halfway toward their primary objective, namely to top Pool A and therefore secure themselves a potential home route all the way through to the final, which is in the Aviva Stadium.
Obstacles remain, not least a Gloucester that head coach George Skivington strongly hinted will be locked and fully loaded for the return marquee fixture at Kingsholm on January 14th, as opposed to the largely second-string side against whom Leinster filled their boots with a 57-0 win last Friday at the RDS.
A week later at the Aviva Stadium, Leinster host a Racing 92 side who could also be fighting for their lives.
Leinster lead Pool A ahead of Exeter, the only other side now with a maximum of 10 points in that half of the draw, with a vastly superior points difference of +89 compared to +45. Two more bonus-point wins would seemingly guarantee top spot.
With that in mind, as pleasing as the nine tries scored was not conceding a point. “The nil part is hugely pleasing,” said Leo Cullen. “We’ll see where everything sits but it is great to be in a healthy position in our pool or conference and whether you need two more wins or whatever.
“Now you are in a position where you can be top. We weren’t in that position last year and you are looking at all the different permutations. They are all much simpler for us now. Ideally, score four tries [in each game] because we have a decent bank of points at the moment.”
Denied a planned rest week over Christmas due to a change in fixtures, Skivington had no regrets about resting his frontliners, stating this was the only fixture which could serve that purpose. “That 57-0 result is on me.”
Leinster have a 10-day turnaround to their St Stephen’s Day fixture against Munster at a sold-out Thomond Park before hosting Connacht on New Year’s Day at the RDS six days later.
“We’ll change the team but there are guys who have been incredibly unlucky to lose out the last few weeks,” said Cullen. “Some of the calls are incredibly tight in some areas. The group is competitive and guys are itching to play. It’s mixing and matching the next couple of weeks. Some guys will play Munster and others will come back in for Connacht the week after. We’ll have a group that is raring to go. I think. I hope.”
Leinster are used to planning for an away fixture, which is not especially family friendly for those involved in the trip to Limerick.
“It’s a half-seven kick-off down there and, ah, people are used to it. We’ll do a team run on Christmas Eve, in the morning, and then the guys not involved in the team will get a few days off then across the 24th, 25th, 26th and the day after the game as well. Come back in fresh and be ready for Connacht here on New Year’s Day. That’s the business we’re in. It’s part and parcel of the action. You just have to roll up the sleeves and get on with it.
“It’s making sure that you have a group that is highly motivated. It’s a bloody tough place to go. We have experienced that enough times down the years with the full house, the influence that the crowd has on officials because they get into everything, cheer for everyone. It makes the officials second guess some of their calls.
“You get that sense from where the coaches are sitting. We have experienced it where we don’t get into a natural flow in the game. You can think back to when we had the red card down there and we had a yellow card as well, maybe two, where we just lose control of the game. So it is about making sure we keep control in a pretty chaotic type of environment.”
Cullen would be supportive of this fixture one year taking place in Páirc Uí Chaoimh after Munster sold out the stadium for the game against a South Africa selection.
“The atmosphere looked amazing down there for that game, ‘Zombie’ blaring out. Definitely, it would be great. I watched Elton John down there during the summer and it was very good. I brought our son, he’s a mad Elton fan. The stadium looks cool, it would be great.”
