METAPHORICALLY SPEAKING IT took 48 hours for the Marseille hangover to clear. That makes Caelan Doris one of the lucky ones. Some players, some careers, never recover from a big European defeat. You only have to look back through the distant team-sheets of losing semi-finalists or finalists to appreciate that.
For Doris and Leinster, redemption came in an unlikely form, a date with Glasgow. Hard to believe they were once Leinster and Munster’s biggest rivals outside these shores. As recently as 2019 they went toe to toe with Leinster in the Pro14 decider.
Even this season they defeated Exeter, ran La Rochelle close twice and got one over Munster. On Saturday, however, they were a disgrace, their coach, Danny Wilson, paying the price with the loss of his job.
They’ve become used to losing things at Scotstoun. Star players, Finn Russell, Stuart Hogg and Jonny Gray, got tempted away by higher-payers; coaches Gregor Townsend and Dave Rennie were lured by the attraction of working in international rugby.
So, it’s important not to consider the Glasgow that arrived in the RDS on Saturday in the same bracket as the Glasgow that won the Pro12 in 2015. They may have had 12 internationals, including three British and Irish Lions, but they weren’t the same side. Instead they were the Alka-Seltzer Leinster desperately needed.
“After La Rochelle, the hurt was there,” said Doris yesterday. “I was low for a couple of days. You sort of felt sorry for yourself; you wanted to go back to different moments from the game and change them. You had these internal conversations: ‘What if I did this or that, could it have been different?’
“We processed it as a group and realised it was important that we gave ourselves a couple of days to feel the disappointment fully and not try to turn the page too quickly.
“Early on last week we still felt pretty down but we spoke quite a bit about channelling the hurt the right way and not feeling sorry for ourselves, to use it as extra motivation, to get our attitude right.
“We felt how bad it was (to lose a Champions Cup final) and were motivated by the possibility of lifting a trophy (the URC) at home, the joy and celebrations of that while also being motivated by what we felt in Marseille.
“So, there are two elements to what we went through. I thought those points were driven really well by the coaches; then the players took it on board and drove it ourselves as well.”
If Glasgow was step one, the Bulls this Friday is step two.
European Cup final post-mortems will just have to wait. There is a semi-final and final up ahead, a fifth successive Pro14/URC title to win. Except this title carries more weight, because this one will be achieved against the heavies from South Africa: Durban’s Sharks, Cape Town’s Stormers and Pretoria’s Bulls.
If nothing else, they’ll be tested physically. “It is good for us because one of our work-ons over the past few years has been dealing with those power-based teams,” said Doris.
“In some aspects we were better against La Rochelle (than we had been in the past) at stopping teams running through us.
“And that’s in part due to getting exposure against the South African teams. They obviously rely a bit more at set-piece and on their pack, so Friday is another opportunity to go again and learn from that.”
One person he is relishing ‘going at’ again is Marcel Coetzee, the outstanding Bulls No8 who lit it up in a white shirt with Ulster. Everything about the big South African, his running game, his offloads, his strength, Doris respects.
“He’s someone we need to tackle with two men, ideally, to prevent him from getting go-forward.
“But, we can’t allow space to be created by two men committing to him, so he’s challenging in that aspect.
“They’ve a strong back row: there’s Arno Botha who was in Munster for a few years, Elrigh Louw as well is a young fellah who is very physical and a good player too.
“So, the three of them – we’ll have our hands full.”
If nothing else it’ll be a tougher test than Glasgow whose concession of 76 points led to the side’s worst result in any competition for almost a quarter of a century.
Quite how that team remained in the top four of this season’s URC for over half the season is a mystery going by last Saturday’s evidence.
“To be honest, we’ve had some very tough games against Glasgow in the past and we were expecting another one like that,” said Doris.
“They can be a very physical team and they rely on brutality, so we were expecting a very tough game, then we scored a few early on after their first try and it went quite differently.
“You can only play what’s in front of you at the same time, there is plenty of room for improvement. It will be a different challenge altogether on Friday because the Bulls are, in some ways, more similar to La Rochelle. Very physical pack, more of a power-based team. It’s a good opportunity to go again and right a few wrongs from La Rochelle.”
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