Leo Cullen looks bemused. He has just been asked, or, it has been suggested that Leon McDonald might replace senior coach Stuart Lancaster when he leaves Leinster at the end of this season for French side Racing 92.
Cullen signed a new contracted on Monday which will keep him with Leinster until 2025, a round 10 years having begun in 2015. The numbers keep popping up. Irish coach Andy Farrell’s contract will also expire in two years, while there is a Lions tour to Australia scheduled for the summer of 2025.
That will be an interesting transition year if the pair decide to move on.
“I haven’t been made aware of any link there,” says Cullen about the Farrell contract and his contract ending in the same year.
“You’re just throwing names out there,” he adds. “There are some good coaches out there that you want to have a conversation with. There are people you know in the game and you’re curious about how you can learn from them. “You’re naming somebody there [McDonald], who is coaching the Blues. He was here coaching New Zealand ‘A’ and he’s a bloody good coach. Him and Goody [Andrew Goodman] have a good relationship from Tazman.”
Cullen then pours cold water on the entire exercise of speculating about Lancaster’s successor.
“There is lots of other good coaches out there as well,” he says.
A two-year extension seems an arbitrary decision although Cullen has tended to agreed to short contracts with Leinster.
He is lucky, he says, to be able to coach the club he grew up with and played for and that family reasons were as much baked into the decision making cake as much as cold business calculations.
But Cullen is firstly a coach, one of the most successful club coaches in world rugby and as a player did not baulk at moving to play in Leicester between 2005-07 before returning to Leinster to finish his playing career. He did look around before signing the new deal.
“Yeah, like definitely yeah,” he says. “I’m very happy here. The family piece as well, that has to work. A few bits there in the past make me think about the future. I’m lucky I’ve a very supportive wife.
“The job can be quite consuming. But I’ve got a lot of support there, friends and family which just makes life a lot easier ... The coaching world is precarious.
“Most people have to travel. That’s the reality. You have to travel around the world wherever the opportunities arise. I am fortunate to be able to coach my home team, which is probably very different to the majority of coaches out there.
“England changed their coach. Wales changed their coach. Off the back of England changing their coach, Australia changed their coach and the merry-go-round goes on. New Zealand made some changes in season. Succession is hard. You see it in soccer all the time. The stability of the club is probably the most important part.”
Cullen has always been judicious with words and while he has signed up for two years, at 45 years old he is a young man with fresh years ahead.
Ambition must be part of coaching as much as playing and Cullen, for all his well-chosen answers, agrees to having enthusiasm and aspirations for bigger things in his career.
A natural progression for him in two years would be to step up to international level, which he knows is an entirely different challenge to the daily routine of club coaching.
But having just inked his deal with Leinster that’s not a discussion he wants to have.
“Of course, yeah. You’ve got to have a level of ambition for sure, whenever that is,” he says. “It is not something I’m in a rush to do. It’s not a burning ambition to do it tomorrow morning.
“When you watch the Six Nations, November internationals, World Cups, there is something about the very pointy end of the game. That’s the thing about sport. You want to expose yourself at that real pointy end. You want to test yourself out. That goes with the territory of being involved and being ambitious in sport.”
At least Cullen now knows that Leinster’s home ground at the RDS in Dublin’s Ballsbridge is also part of the brave new world ahead.
Shane Nolan, the new Leinster Chief Executive Officer, who took over from Mick Dawson, hopes to announce within the next two or three months what the new stadium will look like.
Nolan says the money is in place and is already being used on design plans and preparation work before building begins.
“We’ve signed the 25-year lease,” said Nolan. That’s our home for the next 25 years, which is good to get that certainty. I’m working with Geraldine [Ruane], the new [RDS] CEO.
“There is tons of work going on behind the scenes. There’s a real pace happening in it now, which is great. I’ve seen early sights of the vision of the stadium and it looks really, really good.”
There is, however, no timeline yet agreed for the project’s starting or completion dates.
“I think pretty soon, in the next two or three months, we should be able to announce something in terms of what it will look like. The vision, the visuals, the timelines and all that kind of stuff. The funds are there to make it happen.”
Earlier this month, the Government announced that the Large Scale Infrastructure Fund that was announced a few years ago is still available. In 2021 the cost of the RDS project was set at €50 million. Since then, the costs have increased.
“We would love to see another round of those grants but that is a question for another day,” said Minister of Sport Thomas Byrne.
