THE ’90S KIDS among you might recall the Warner Brothers cartoon, Pinky and The Brain, in which two genetically engineered mice sought global domination from within Acme Labs.
The central premise of the show was their recurring failure, with The Brain’s plots typically foiled either by his own hubris or by Pinky’s interference or by freak, unforeseeable circumstances.
But they kept going back to the well. Each episode would conclude with Pinky asking The Brain what they should do for the night, to which The Brain would famously respond, “The same thing we do every night, Pinky: try to take over the world!”
The scale of Leinster’s ambition is more modest — the Club World Cup won’t begin until 2028 — but the conversations among Leinster’s brains trust at the end of every campaign since 2018/2019 have surely been vaguely similar: get back on the horse and try to win another Champions Cup.
Europe will again be the priority for Leo Cullen and Jacques Nienaber in 2025/26. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. For all that the URC has developed into a broadly watchable, worthwhile competition, there is little point in beating around the bush: the Champions Cup remains the most meaningful trophy that a club from Ireland, Scotland, Wales or Italy can add to its list of honours. And for as long as it’s treated with reverence by a handful of top sides from France and England, it will remain special to Leinster with good reason.
In its absence from their trophy cabinet, the eastern province have likely become so infatuated with the very idea of the Champions Cup that, much like The Brain, they have tripped themselves up with the prize in sight. That’s understandable on a human level, too: next summer’s final in Bilbao will mark eight years since Leinster last got their hands on the trophy. For context, Munster’s seemingly eternal wait to land the Holy Grail in the 2000s ended just six years after their first near miss at Twickenham.
Jacques Nienaber and Leo Cullen. Nick Elliott / INPHO
Nick Elliott / INPHO / INPHO
As Leinster seek to break the cycle of heartbreak in Europe, the temptation may be to play down the importance of a fifth star — or ‘a first star for this group’, or however they should choose to frame it — even internally. Who knows — it might even be healthier circuit-breaker at this point to lay it all on the table and say the quiet part out loud: we’re obsessed with this competition, sometimes so much so that it causes us to freak out a little bit, and we don’t quite know how to get it right, but it will be worth it when we do.
Save for a slight downgrade from a World XV-calibre player in Jordie Barrett to Rieko Ioane — an 86-cap All Black in his own right — and the natural progression of young talent, Leinster’s playing personnel will look broadly similar to how it did last season.
At this juncture, the potential points of difference for their upcoming campaign are more intangible, but still intriguing.
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To win the URC is now valuable in its own right but to have ended their trophy drought felt arguably more pertinent for this Leinster squad, if only for the fact that it can no longer be levelled at them that for all of their excellence from October to May, they don’t actually win things.
Surely to have raised silverware at the end of last season will have equally lifted some pressure off shoulders.
Mind you, Jacques Nienaber baulked at this notion when it was put to him by The 42 at a press conference ahead of Leinster’s URC season opener away to the Stormers in Cape Town this Friday.
RG Snyman and Andrew Porter celebrate Leinster's URC title success. Ben Brady / INPHO
Ben Brady / INPHO / INPHO
“Is there less pressure? No,” said Nienaber. “I don’t think so because for us, we’re a club that pride ourselves to fight on two fronts, so we want to fight in the URC and we want to fight in Europe and try and go as deep as possible. But it’s very important for us to understand that we are not entitled to any success.
“And I think our loyal fans also know that: we’re not entitled because we’re Leinster, or because we have some experienced players and some youth coming through and because we’re exciting, or whatever. We’ve got no right to win anything.
“We have to pitch up on Friday night against the very determined Stormers and we have to produce a performance. We will have to fight for it and we will have to go to the gutters for it. And I don’t think the fact that we had a result in the final last year will be relevant, to be honest, after 15 minutes of the game,” added the two-time World Cup-winning coach.
“I don’t think anybody is going to think, ‘Hang on, lads, we won a trophy a couple of months ago, so things should be easier.’ It’s not going to be like that. And I know I’m oversimplifying it, but that’s just how, in my head, I think about it.”
Fair enough. But even the fact that Leinster will open their season in South Africa is in itself a fresh experience for which there could be ultimately positive consequences.
While the players — especially a young group shorn of Lions and Ireland’s summer Test stars — tend to adore these still-novel, fortnight-long tours, they can obviously prove a total balls from a logistical standpoint (just as is the case for the South African clubs when they travel in the opposite direction, often for even longer stints).
Last season, for example, Leinster’s trip to South Africa was fixed for the two weeks immediately preceding their Champions Cup last-16 game. They were consequently forced to split not only their squad but their coaching staff into separate groups, with frontline players preparing for Harlequins in Dublin while a touring party contended with the Bulls and the Sharks thousands of kilometres away.
It clearly caused no harm against Quins, but it was hardly ideal to have to effectively run two separate operations heading into such a crucial block of fixtures.
Without remotely meaning to disparage the South African franchises whose contributions to the URC have elevated the competition, to have gotten the tour ‘out of the way’ this early will conceivably make life easier for Leinster when they begin to lock in for the European knockouts next spring.
Scott Penny and RG Snyman tackle JF van Heerden of the Bulls at Loftus Versfeld. Steve Haag Sports / Christiaan Kotze/INPHO
Steve Haag Sports / Christiaan Kotze/INPHO / Christiaan Kotze/INPHO
And yet where the rhythm of this campaign will also differ is that Leinster’s opening block of league fixtures could scarcely be more difficult.
Last season began with victory away to Edinburgh, a home win over the Dragons, and a success over Benetton in Treviso — sides who finished seventh, 10th and last respectively. While there will be a natural caveat in the lack of internationals available to all sides, this season will begin with a trip to last season’s fifth-placed finishers, the Stormers, before an altitude game against a Bulls team seeking revenge for their URC final defeat in June. Leinster’s first home game, then, is hardly a gimme either, with the Sharks, beaten semi-finalists last term, coming to Dublin.
Week four, mind you, will bring with it a contemptuous familiarity: Munster at Croke Park, just as was the case at the same stage a season beforehand.
“We have a tough start,” said Nienaber. “So, if you think of the three South African teams — the team that ended fifth, the team that ended second, and then the team that finished third… It’s teams that normally challenge for competitions, at the backend of the competition. We will have a very good idea where we are after these three games, and then, obviously, it’s Munster at Croke Park.
“So, our first month is a blockbuster month for us, which is great.
“Then, we build from there and, like I say, we’re not entitled to anything,” added Nienaber, who was at pains to reiterate the point throughout his press conference. “We’re not entitled to having a good start because we are the defending champions.”
A scenic start, then, to a season in which the world is Leinster’s oyster and Europe remains their white whale — at least for now.
A defence of their league title will feel like the baseline even if they have to play catch-up, and to retain the URC would be no mean feat at all. But the overarching goal will be to enjoy a very different kind of conversation before the credits roll next June.
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'We've got no right to win anything' - Leinster's season begins with blockbuster month
THE ’90S KIDS among you might recall the Warner Brothers cartoon, Pinky and The Brain, in which two genetically engineered mice sought global domination from within Acme Labs.
The central premise of the show was their recurring failure, with The Brain’s plots typically foiled either by his own hubris or by Pinky’s interference or by freak, unforeseeable circumstances.
But they kept going back to the well. Each episode would conclude with Pinky asking The Brain what they should do for the night, to which The Brain would famously respond, “The same thing we do every night, Pinky: try to take over the world!”
The scale of Leinster’s ambition is more modest — the Club World Cup won’t begin until 2028 — but the conversations among Leinster’s brains trust at the end of every campaign since 2018/2019 have surely been vaguely similar: get back on the horse and try to win another Champions Cup.
Europe will again be the priority for Leo Cullen and Jacques Nienaber in 2025/26. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. For all that the URC has developed into a broadly watchable, worthwhile competition, there is little point in beating around the bush: the Champions Cup remains the most meaningful trophy that a club from Ireland, Scotland, Wales or Italy can add to its list of honours. And for as long as it’s treated with reverence by a handful of top sides from France and England, it will remain special to Leinster with good reason.
In its absence from their trophy cabinet, the eastern province have likely become so infatuated with the very idea of the Champions Cup that, much like The Brain, they have tripped themselves up with the prize in sight. That’s understandable on a human level, too: next summer’s final in Bilbao will mark eight years since Leinster last got their hands on the trophy. For context, Munster’s seemingly eternal wait to land the Holy Grail in the 2000s ended just six years after their first near miss at Twickenham.
As Leinster seek to break the cycle of heartbreak in Europe, the temptation may be to play down the importance of a fifth star — or ‘a first star for this group’, or however they should choose to frame it — even internally. Who knows — it might even be healthier circuit-breaker at this point to lay it all on the table and say the quiet part out loud: we’re obsessed with this competition, sometimes so much so that it causes us to freak out a little bit, and we don’t quite know how to get it right, but it will be worth it when we do.
Save for a slight downgrade from a World XV-calibre player in Jordie Barrett to Rieko Ioane — an 86-cap All Black in his own right — and the natural progression of young talent, Leinster’s playing personnel will look broadly similar to how it did last season.
At this juncture, the potential points of difference for their upcoming campaign are more intangible, but still intriguing.
To win the URC is now valuable in its own right but to have ended their trophy drought felt arguably more pertinent for this Leinster squad, if only for the fact that it can no longer be levelled at them that for all of their excellence from October to May, they don’t actually win things.
Surely to have raised silverware at the end of last season will have equally lifted some pressure off shoulders.
Mind you, Jacques Nienaber baulked at this notion when it was put to him by The 42 at a press conference ahead of Leinster’s URC season opener away to the Stormers in Cape Town this Friday.
“Is there less pressure? No,” said Nienaber. “I don’t think so because for us, we’re a club that pride ourselves to fight on two fronts, so we want to fight in the URC and we want to fight in Europe and try and go as deep as possible. But it’s very important for us to understand that we are not entitled to any success.
“And I think our loyal fans also know that: we’re not entitled because we’re Leinster, or because we have some experienced players and some youth coming through and because we’re exciting, or whatever. We’ve got no right to win anything.
“We have to pitch up on Friday night against the very determined Stormers and we have to produce a performance. We will have to fight for it and we will have to go to the gutters for it. And I don’t think the fact that we had a result in the final last year will be relevant, to be honest, after 15 minutes of the game,” added the two-time World Cup-winning coach.
“I don’t think anybody is going to think, ‘Hang on, lads, we won a trophy a couple of months ago, so things should be easier.’ It’s not going to be like that. And I know I’m oversimplifying it, but that’s just how, in my head, I think about it.”
Fair enough. But even the fact that Leinster will open their season in South Africa is in itself a fresh experience for which there could be ultimately positive consequences.
While the players — especially a young group shorn of Lions and Ireland’s summer Test stars — tend to adore these still-novel, fortnight-long tours, they can obviously prove a total balls from a logistical standpoint (just as is the case for the South African clubs when they travel in the opposite direction, often for even longer stints).
Last season, for example, Leinster’s trip to South Africa was fixed for the two weeks immediately preceding their Champions Cup last-16 game. They were consequently forced to split not only their squad but their coaching staff into separate groups, with frontline players preparing for Harlequins in Dublin while a touring party contended with the Bulls and the Sharks thousands of kilometres away.
It clearly caused no harm against Quins, but it was hardly ideal to have to effectively run two separate operations heading into such a crucial block of fixtures.
Without remotely meaning to disparage the South African franchises whose contributions to the URC have elevated the competition, to have gotten the tour ‘out of the way’ this early will conceivably make life easier for Leinster when they begin to lock in for the European knockouts next spring.
And yet where the rhythm of this campaign will also differ is that Leinster’s opening block of league fixtures could scarcely be more difficult.
Last season began with victory away to Edinburgh, a home win over the Dragons, and a success over Benetton in Treviso — sides who finished seventh, 10th and last respectively. While there will be a natural caveat in the lack of internationals available to all sides, this season will begin with a trip to last season’s fifth-placed finishers, the Stormers, before an altitude game against a Bulls team seeking revenge for their URC final defeat in June. Leinster’s first home game, then, is hardly a gimme either, with the Sharks, beaten semi-finalists last term, coming to Dublin.
Week four, mind you, will bring with it a contemptuous familiarity: Munster at Croke Park, just as was the case at the same stage a season beforehand.
“We have a tough start,” said Nienaber. “So, if you think of the three South African teams — the team that ended fifth, the team that ended second, and then the team that finished third… It’s teams that normally challenge for competitions, at the backend of the competition. We will have a very good idea where we are after these three games, and then, obviously, it’s Munster at Croke Park.
“So, our first month is a blockbuster month for us, which is great.
“Then, we build from there and, like I say, we’re not entitled to anything,” added Nienaber, who was at pains to reiterate the point throughout his press conference. “We’re not entitled to having a good start because we are the defending champions.”
A scenic start, then, to a season in which the world is Leinster’s oyster and Europe remains their white whale — at least for now.
A defence of their league title will feel like the baseline even if they have to play catch-up, and to retain the URC would be no mean feat at all. But the overarching goal will be to enjoy a very different kind of conversation before the credits roll next June.
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