LEO CULLEN SAYS Leinster remain as driven as ever to bring a United Rugby Championship title back to the province as his squad look to pick themselves up from last weekend’s Heineken Champions Cup final defeat to La Rochelle.
It’s been a difficult week for the province following their dramatic 24-21 loss in Marseille last weekend, with the quick turnaround between that game and their URC quarter-final date with Glasgow Warriors making tomorrow’s meeting at the RDS a challenging fixture for the province.
The challenge for head coach Leo Cullen this week has been to pick the group up and remain focused as the province look to keep their hunt for a fifth straight league title on track, even if the pain of Marseille will hang over the group for some time.
“Well that’s the internal motivation, that’s the individual motivation, the group motivation,” Cullen said.
“There’s a real privilege to be involved with this team, I think, and from the player’s point of view there are some great bonds and friendships, and some guys haven’t experienced a huge amount of success and they are desperate for it.
“Like a Joe McCarthy for example, a young player who has come into the team, only made his debut during the Six Nations window and there he is coming off the bench in a Champions Cup final, and here he is starting in a quarter-final.
There’s lots of those sub-plots within a team. The drive is there, strong as ever, and if anything after the weekend it’s stronger than ever. But this week has been about trying to learn some harsh enough lessons from the game and improve as a group and move forward.
“We’re all keen to get going now at this point and just get back into that routine of playing.
“But it’s going to be a tough challenge, Glasgow are a good team, a niggly type of team as well, and we need to make sure we’re in the right headspace for the game because it’s a great challenge and hopefully we have a big crowd to cheer the guys on as well.
“It’s onto the next challenge, isn’t it?
“You try your best to park the (La Rochelle) game, I think it’ll be there in the back of our minds for the future, but great to be back here at the RDS, we haven’t played here in a long time.”
Leinster keep eight of the team that started against La Rochelle last weekend, with seven fresh faces coming into the starting XV, a bruising day in Marseille taking its toll on the squad as James Lowe, Hugo Keenan, Johnny Sexton and Rónan Kelleher all sit out the Glasgow game with injury.
“Some of them will be back in next week (if Leinster reach the semi-finals), but I couldn’t be certain with exactly who,” Cullen says.
“It’s day by day, particularly with Rónan who took the most serious bang in the game and came off very early.
“Johnny had that issue with his foot and ankle, so he wasn’t able to train this week, but we’re hoping he’ll be back in training next week, we’ll see how he goes through. He’ll try run tomorrow and we’ll see how that goes.
“James picked up that previous knock and again he’d be touch and go next week. Hugo is probably pretty similar, we’ll see how they are, and see how the weekend goes. Obviously you have to win the game first to be in the semi-final.”
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