FRESH FROM WATCHING his team stick 76 points on Glasgow Warriors last Saturday, Leo Cullen admitted the one-sided, 12-try win was “not ideal” preparation for a United Rugby Championship semi-final.
The quarter-final defeat of Glasgow was a hollow affair. A first home fixture at the RDS since February – and a knockout game at that – attracting less than 10,000 Leinster supporters through the gates.
The apathy towards the occasion was understandable. Many had dipped deep into their pockets to find a way to Marseille for the Champions Cup final a week previously, and as it turns out, Glasgow really didn’t want to be there anyway.
Leinster chiefs will likely be more concerned to see that tickets have been moving slowly again this week, with just over 10,000 sold for tonight’s semi-final meeting with the Bulls [KO 7.35pm, TG4/Premier Sports 2] as of yesterday.
After the heights of Europe, the URC is struggling to capture the imagination. The fact that Leinster’s knock-out games have been on free-to-air television is hardly helping, while the stretched-out season has also left the province competing with the Ireland football team and the GAA championships for bums on seats.
Here’s hoping those who do make their way to the RDS later today are rewarded with a decent contest.
If last Saturday offered Leinster an easy opportunity to shake off the initial post-Marseille blues and hone back in on winning another league title, the Bulls will surely make them work for a place in next weekend’s decider, where the winners will take on either the Stormers or Ulster.
“They’re pretty efficient in what they do, and that’s the thing about them,” Cullen says of the Bulls. “They’re an efficient team. They defend well generally. They play in the right areas of the field and when they get inside the opposition 22 they’re patient, and organised as well.
It’s a good test for our guys. But that’s what we wanted. We want to stretch ourselves all the time. It’s such a new challenge isn’t it, playing a play-off game? Even the way the season is, you’re into June now. It’s a little bit unusual. But it’s a fascinating dynamic and one we’re hugely excited by.”
While the Bulls always bring power around the setpiece, the also possess plenty of attacking threat.
They travel to Dublin as the second-highest try-scorers in the URC, with 70 tries to their name – Leinster unsurprisingly lead the way, last weekend’s haul of 12 pushing them up to 85 for the season. The Bulls have also thrown more offloads (228) than any other team in the competition, with former Ulster player Marcell Coetzee out in front (37) in the individual charts.
Yet much will rest on how they have managed a challenging week. The six day-turnaround for both of these sides doesn’t sit well, and is particularly demanding on the Pretoria-based Bulls.
Having scraped past the Sharks in dramatic fashion just before Leinster kicked off against Glasgow last Saturday, the Bulls left South Africa for Dublin via a handful of different flights across Sunday and Monday, with Leinster playing the role of accommodating host by helping out with training equipment. They come into this game having won nine of their last 10 league outings, but if the Bulls are to pull off an upset tonight, they won’t be thanking the league for their role in aiding preparations.
Leinster won’t have much sympathy for their visitors – these are the rewards you get for topping the league table, after all. The Bulls have been to Dublin already this season, losing 31-3 at the Aviva Stadium on the opening weekend, but Cullen feels they will be better equipped for the challenge this time around.
“The group they’ve assembled has some very, very experienced players, the likes of Bismarck du Plessis on the bench, (Marcel) Coetzee, Morne Steyn on the bench as well.
“So those very, very experienced players have been around the block and then there’s a fair chunk of young players that they’ve brought through this season. So for those young guys, some of them may not have been huge out in South Africa so for them the experience of coming here up to the north on multiple occasions, getting used to playing away… You’re playing in Pretoria which is hotter, there’s the altitude, so there’s the different challenge of the conditions here and all the rest.
“Over time you become more familiar. Even talking to some of our younger guys, and the feedback from their experience in South Africa, it just becomes less daunting the next time you do it. It’s like anything really, isn’t it?
As I said previously, I grew up watching these teams. You have them on such a pedestal, the Bulls, you think they were a real dominant force against the best of Australia and New Zealand as well. They were a properly dominant force team.”
‘Were’ being the key word. The Bulls’ last Super Rugby title came all the way back in 2010, when Cullen was still lifting trophies as a Leinster player [they also won the South Africa-only Super Rugby Unlocked in 2020].
Now playing under the URC umbrella, Jake White’s team are hoping to establish themselves as a force again. Tonight they get to test themselves against a Leinster team aiming for a fifth straight league title, who are desperate to end the season with some silverware having fallen agonisingly short in Europe.
“It’s important we have that nervous energy,” Cullen adds.
“Not just be expecting that it’s going to click into gear for us, we’re going to have to make it happen. We’re going to have to work hard and we’re going to have to fight and scrap for everything we get out there.”
LEINSTER: Jimmy O’Brien; Jordan Larmour, Garry Ringrose; Robbie Henshaw, Rory O’Loughlin; Ross Byrne, Jamison Gibson-Park; Andrew Porter, Dan Sheehan, Tadhg Furlong; Joe McCarthy, James Ryan (captain); Caelan Doris, Josh van der Flier, Jack Conan.
Replacements: Seán Cronin, Cian Healy, Michael Ala’alatoa, Ross Molony, Ryan Baird, Luke McGrath, Johnny Sexton, Ciarán Frawley.
BULLS: Canan Moodie; David Kriel, Cornal Hendricks, Harold Vorster, Madosh Tambwe; Chris Smith, Zak Burger; Gerhard Steenekamp, Johan Grobbelaar, Mornay Smith; Walt Steenkamp, Ruan Nortje; Marcell Coetzee, Arno Botha, Elrigh Louw.
Replacements: Bismarck du Plessis, Simphiwe Matanzima, Robert Hunt, Janko Swanepoel, WJ Steenkamp; Embrose Papier, Morne Steyn, Kurt-Lee Arendse.
Referee: Andrea Piardi (FIR)
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