Leinster’s four stars above the crest on their shirts can be triggering for some. Those who would align with other clubs take a dim view of it and look on the constellation as self-regarding and boastful.
Others see it as a reminder that four stars is just that and not five stars like Toulouse have on their shirts and therefore a constant reminder that the team must improve.
It is a badge of honour and a public display. It says that the Leinster team expects and aspires to winning more trophies in the European Champions Cup.
That they are the only Irish side to have won the Champions trophy four times is a source of pride. The stars are shorthand for a brief history of Leinster rugby in emojis.
“[Toulouse] have five stars, it’s what we want. But looking at their history and our history, it’s pretty similar. Two massive European clubs going head-to-head, which is exactly what you want. You have to beat the best to win,” said Leinster coach Leo Cullen last season.
He’s not the only one to have said it. Jack Conan said it four years ago. “We want five stars,” said the Irish backrow. Hugo Keenan spoke of it as well. “They’re the ones with five stars, they got there before us,” said the Leinster fullback talking about Toulouse last season.
It’s not just Leinster. The use of stars to indicate success across all sports is a common convention. In football the first team to adopt it was Italian side Juventus, who put one golden star with five points on the team’s shirt in 1958, after Italian Football Federation approval.
The star represented their tenth Italian Football Championship and Serie A title, which was at the time, a new national record.
Celtic have won 53 Scottish League titles but the 2023-24 shirt, which was recently leaked, has one star representing the European Cup the club won in 1967.
At international level, most World Cup winning football teams have stars on their shirts, while in rugby, Toulon stitched in a star above its badge after winning the Heineken Cup in 2013.
They added a second one immediately after winning the same competition in 2014 and a third after success in the inaugural European Rugby Champions Cup in 2015.
English Premiership side Saracens also added three stars to their shirt after they prevented Leinster from winning their fifth European Cup in 2019 at Newcastle’s St James Park.
There is a huge drive in Leinster to get that fifth star, for no simpler a reason than many of the current set of Leinster and Ireland players, although wearing the shirt with four stars, have zero stars. They have yet to be officially inducted into Leinster’s legacy of European success.
Without trying to read the mind of Cullen on selection, around half of the names he’s likely to pick today for his squad to play against La Rochelle have yet to win a Champions Cup medal.
That might be an advantage against last year’s winners. Never mind the revenge, there is a hunger in Leinster that masks the season they have had up to last week, when they fell to Munster.
Until that point the team had been in a kind of cruise control and had built up the assumption in people’s minds that they were all a highly decorated, cup winning outfit of players. But that’s not the case.
Leinster last won the cup in 2018. Since then, fullback Rob Kearney, left wing and that day’s captain, Isa Nacewa, number 8 Jordi Murphy, openside flanker Dan Leavy, blindside Scott Fardy, lock Devin Toner and hooker Sean Cronin have either left Leinster or retired from rugby.
Murphy, who played 30 times for Ireland, stopped playing with Ulster at the end of this season, while Leavy’s career was cut desperately short after a serious knee injury.
Of the starting players for the 2018 final, the ones still playing with Leinster are right wing Jordan Larmour, scrumhalf Luke McGrath, centres Garry Ringrose and Robbie Henshaw, outhalf Johnny Sexton, lock James Ryan, who won man of the match, and props Cian Healy and Tadhg Furlong.
Sexton remains injured and will not start the match, while Jamison Gibson-Park is a likely starting scrumhalf and with James Lowe apparently fit, there is a wing place for him.
Gibson-Park, Conan and Andrew Porter came off the bench that day against Racing ‘92. But the reality is that most of the players in Aviva Stadium tomorrow, including this year’s Grand Slam winners Hugo Keenan, Josh van der Flier, Ross Byrne, Ronan Kelleher, Dan Sheehan and Caelan Doris have not yet earned a single star.
Of the 23 match day players from the 2018 European Cup winning Leinster side, 11, including Joey Carbery, who was on the bench but didn’t play, are no longer with Leinster.
Possibly just six players from the last win, Gibson-Park, Ringrose, Henshaw, Furlong, Porter and Ryan will be part of tomorrows starting side to face La Rochelle.
Leinster are indisputably a winning team. But those players like hooker Sheehan, who was capped for Ireland before he played in a Champions Cup match, dearly want to come in from the cold.
The drive is to to join their teammates from the class of 2018, win the fifth star and prove right many people’s assumptions.
