Jacques Nienaber has welcomed the news that James Ryan has signed a new three-year central IRFU contract to remain with Leinster until at least the summer of 2028 as both “excellent” and also a positive reflection on the province’s set-up.
The 28-year-old lock has won three Six Nations titles with Ireland, including a Grand Slam in his 67-cap career to date, as well as four Pro12/Pro14 titles and a European Champions Cup crown in his 89 appearances with Leinster.
“Yes brilliant, and everybody who has signed on,” said Nienaber, a day after contract extensions for Andrew Porter and Tadgh Furlong were also confirmed. “I think it’s good for us and for Ireland, and for us the proud thing, and I don’t know if we can claim it, is that whenever a player signs a contract extension it means that they are not just comfortable but they are happy with what they are getting at the club.”
[ Andrew Porter and Tadhg Furlong sign IRFU contract extensions to 2027Opens in new window ]
By this he meant Leinster’s “rugby programme”, a belief “that their game will progress and they will become better rugby players”, that their strength and conditioning programme will improve them physically, “and also they’re comfortable with their welfare programme so that we look after them and we manage them well in conjunction with Ireland”. Nienaber also acknowledged that money and looking after one’s family will always be primary considerations.
“So that’s a nice thing for me as a coach, that they’re comfortable with those three elements, if I can put it like that.”
✍️ James Ryan has signed a three-year contract extension with Leinster Rugby and Ireland until the end of the 2027/28 season! 🎉
— Leinster Rugby (@leinsterrugby) December 17, 2024
📰 Read more here: https://t.co/5r5CAEaKCm#NeverLessThanEverything pic.twitter.com/mjwPuynOuF
Verdicts varied on the quality, or otherwise, of Leinster’s 15-7 win over Clermont last Saturday but the Leinster senior coach maintained “a team must always cherish victories because there will come a time when you don’t get them and then you kind of wish that you celebrated them more when you did get them. And if you look at Man City and where they are now, things can change in a heartbeat. But putting that aside, the disappointment is not that we won, the disappointment is if we look at our performance measured against the standard that we set ourselves, I don’t think that was on par.”
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Nienaber said that the entire leadership, be it coaches and players, would all be obliged to look at themselves and how they could have made the performance better.
Nienaber likes to place teams in the context of “a performance clock”, with the optimum of noon belonging to trophy winners, and he places Leinster somewhere between 10 and 11 and 1pm in recent years.
Furthermore, while stressing that he was not talking about Man City’s recent decline, Nienaber believes teams go into a freefall, ie go past 12 and start plummeting to 6 o’clock, and this “is probably a lack of leadership where you think because you are successful, ‘we’re always going to be successful’, so you don’t find new ways to drive a squad or a team.
“The second one is probably, and I don’t know if it’s the right word, but I’m thinking in Afrikaans and trying to verbalise it in English, when there’s an abundance of arrogance. And an abundance of arrogance is when you as a team feel, ‘I don’t have to improve my game. I’m top of my game anyway. I don’t have to find new ways of doing things’.
“So, you don’t evolve because ‘I’m at the top of my game. I don’t have to improve. I’m winning anyway’.
“And then the last one for me is the lack of creativity, as in, ‘if this is the way we do it at Leinster, this is the way we’ve always done it, this is the way we did it in conjunction with Ireland and we’ve been successful like this in the last six years’.
“There is no need to change because the other things are you are one of the top clubs, you are the hare that they chase, you got the crosshairs on your back. If you don’t evolve in your leadership style, if you don’t evolve in your playing style, if you don’t evolve in the plans and creativity, teams are always going to catch up to you,” he said, which may, or may not, have been Nienaber’s way of praising Leinster for hiring him and seeking to evolve differently.
Leinster lost seven of their throws against Clermont and Nienaber revealed that they had “taken risks” in seeking to develop their lineout. Mindful that law trials used in the autumn Tests will come into effect on January 1st, specifically that scrums and lineouts must be formed within 30 seconds, Leinster had been “speeding up that process” in training and were also trying “new stuff”.
“Clermont are quality opposition, and they’ve got a very good lineout defence like Connacht,” said Nienaber in reference to next Saturday’s opponents in the URC at the Aviva Stadium (kick-off 5.30pm, live on RTÉ 2 and Premier Sports 1). But he maintained: “That’s what we are paid to do, sometimes take risks as a squad, as a team, as coaches and as players.”
Pointing out that they lost only one of their throws against Bristol, Nienaber returned to his theme. “How do you stay at the top? You have to be creative, you have to evolve. You have to try new things. And sometimes it comes at a risk like it did this weekend, and thankfully for us, we still got the win. But we are still disappointed in our performance.”
Liam Turner has been ruled out of the Connacht game after picking up an ankle injury, while Thomas Clarkson (arm) and Jordan Larmour, who missed the game, will be further assessed this week.
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