Reproduced with permission from Whiff of Cordite
MATT O’CONNOR WILL be the next Leinster head coach. He’s already met the players according to reports, and the decision will be announced in the next few days.
It’s a swift turnaround from Leinster Rugby, who must have foreseen how things have since transpired with Joe Schmidt from the moment Louis Picamoles scored the equalising try in Lansdowne, or perhaps from the moment BNZ rolled out that 60-burger in June.
But who is this new coach and will he be any good? Confession time: we don’t really know anything about him first hand. So, as always, we welcome input from those who do.
Here’s what we do know. He’s been Richard Cockerill’s right hand man at Leicester since 2008, where his job title was ‘Head Coach’, but he has effectively been their No.2 and before that he worked with the Brumbies, whose attacking style (think George Gregan and Stephen Larkham) apparently greatly informs his rugby philosophy.
Michael Dawson has made two winning appointments in a row by targeting young, ambitious coaches who have served an apprenticeship as a No 2 or performed well with a smaller club. This appointment continues the theme. With both Michael Cheika and Joe Schmidt, Dawson got exactly what the doctor ordered, can he do so for a third time on the spin?
Cheika was brought in to stiffen the team up, and Schmidt to bring back some of the traditional flair that had been sacrificed in the process. This time around, the watchword is ‘continuity’.
Schmidt’s Leinster ain’t broken, and O’Connor will be tasked with keeping the wheels turning smoothly, while dealing with some bumps in the road that lie ahead (more of this later). Like Schmidt, he’s a technical coach with clear ideas on how the game should be played, and favours a running game with ball-in-hand.
Free-flowing
Without being close enough to the goings on at Leicester, it’s hard to know just how much to attribute of what goes on there to him, but the augurs are reasonably good. Leicester have never been a club readily associated with free-flowing rugby, but they do play a decent brand of footie. They routinely top the try-count in the Premiership, usually by a large margin and were involved in the best game of Heineken Cup rugby of the season, a thrilling 15-15 draw with Ospreys played at breakneck pace for 80 minutes.
Ben Youngs is their key player and the backline works off his running angles and ability to bring those around him into play. Yes, Manu Tuilagi is an important weapon for them and, no, Leinster don’t have any backs of his ilk, but not everyone in the Leicester backline is an Island-built monster. Matt Tait is their fullback and former Leinsterman Niall Morris is holding down a starting berth on the wing. All that said, they did play Toulouse with Thomas “the Tank Engine” Waldrom at openside this season, prompting us to tweet that if they won it would disprove all we thought we knew about the game.
Challenges
Ok, so it’s another attack-minded coach who seems to have the ability to get his team scoring tries. Sounds good.
But what sort of challenge awaits O’Connor? For starters, Joe Schmidt is a tough act to follow. Matching Schmidt’s achievements seems almost impossible but if O’Connor can at least match the class with which Schmidt conducts himself, that will be half the battle. Leicester and Cockerill in particular have a reputation for whinging and that won’t endear him to Leinster fans.
In order to keep Leinster competitive at the sharp end of the Heineken Cup and Pro12, he’ll have to deal with a number of looming obstacles.
Three stand out as the most obvious.
- No Jonny Sexton next season. Schmidt immediately identified Sexton as the key player in the Leinster team, and under his tutelage the fly-half has graduated from a fleetingly brilliant but occasionally jittery fly-half to a consummate matchwinner and Lions walk-in. O’Connor will be seeking to do the same with Ian Madigan. The process has already started, to the extent that Madigan was apparently strongly considered for selection in Gatland’s party this week. The talent is all there and if indeed O’Connor is a Brumbies man through and through, he may well perfectlysuit Madigan, who has always looked like an Aussie five-eighth born in the wrong hemisphere. O’Connor must build Leinster’s gameplan around the Blackrock kid’s unique attacking instincts.
- Tighthead prop. A province with a tighthead problem? Come on in, Munster and Ulster will say, the water is fine. Mike Ross won’t be able to go on forever and at 33, looks a shade over the hill, with this season’s performances a notch down on the previous two. Michael Bent is not the answer, and it must be frustrating to see Jamie Hagan finally hitting his straps just as he is making for the exit. There do appear to be prospects in Tadgh Furlong and Michael Moore, but producing props is a slow process; how long before they are ready to step up to regular Pro12 commitments, let alone Heineken Cup? No obvious solution exists.
- Centres. It seems increasingly likely Brian O’Driscoll will play on for another season. Gordon D’arcy’s form for Leinster has been mostly excellent this season, and he seems to be very much on Madigan’s wavelength when they have played together. The two old lags have at least one season left in them, but after that, who knows? Fergus McFadden is the likely replacement for D’arcy, but he is a slightly less polished diamond (basically he’s the new Lewis Moody), double-chip-and-gathers notwithstanding. At outside centre, things are sketchier. Eoin O’Malley’s season has been a write-off and he needs to prove his fitness and deliver on his undoubted class next season if he is to be considered a suitable long-term replacement. And then there is Luke Fitzgerald.
If O’Connor can get over these hurdles, he will be well on his way. Second row looks considerably brighter than it did 12 months ago, with Mike McCarthy arriving next season, Leo Cullen rejuvenated and staying on for one more year, Quinn Roux starting to make appearances (which is more than could be said with Ed O’Donoghue and Steven Sykes) and Devin Toner posting a very strong finish to the season. He inherits a club with strong support, a winning culture and great players.