LEINSTER HEAD COACH Leo Cullen says the province would love the chance to take on old rivals Munster at Páirc Uí Chaoimh, following the memorable clash between Graham Rowntree’s side and South Africa A at the Cork GAA venue in November.
Cullen’s United Rugby Championship leaders make the trip down to Limerick on St Stephen’s Day, with Thomond Park once again sold out for the hugely popular Christmas fixture.
Earlier this season, Leinster hosted their home interpro against Munster at Aviva Stadium – with over 45,000 in attendance – and with demand typically high for the return fixture in Thomond, the Leinster boss says he would be fully on board with a future game against Munster being played in front of a bumper crowd in Cork.
Over 41,000 packed into the Páirc for the South Africa game – a record for a rugby match in Munster – and a competitive fixture against old foes Leinster would surely lure a bumper crowd back to the Páric.
“The atmosphere looked amazing down there for that (South Africa) game, ‘Zombie’ blaring out,” Cullen said.
“Definitely, it would be great. I watched Elton John down there during the summer and it was very good. I brought our son, he’s a mad Elton fan. The stadium looks cool, it would be great to play (there).”
That’s the thing in trying to grow the game, reaching more fans. It would be hugely positive.”
Following last Friday’s comfortable Champions Cup defeat of Gloucester at the RDS, Leinster head into the St Stephen’s Day derby looking to continue their winning start to the season, which has seen them clock up 11 straight victories.
It’s a ground that has been good to them in recent years. Munster haven’t claimed a win over Leinster at home since a fiery Christmas interpro in December 2018. Leinster are keen to keep that record going in front of what should be a vocal home crowd.
“It’s making sure that you have a group that is highly motivated,” Cullen continued.
It’s a bloody tough place to go. We have experienced that enough times down the years with the full house, the influence that the crowd has on officials because they get into everything, cheer for everyone. It makes the officials second guess some of their calls. You get that sense from where the coaches are sitting.
“We have experienced it where we don’t get into a natural flow in the game. You can think back to when we had the red card down there (2018) and we had a yellow card as well, maybe two, where we just lose control of the game. So it is about making sure we keep control in a pretty chaotic type of environment.”
Worryingly for Munster, Leinster have been in high-scoring form recently. One week on from scoring 42 points away to Racing, they stuck nine tries on a heavily rotated Gloucester side on Friday.
For Cullen, the most pleasing aspect of that 57-0 win was keeping the visitors scoreless – with Garry Ringrose and Johnny Sexton both producing brilliant try-saving tackles in the second half, when the result was long beyond doubt.
“The nil part is hugely pleasing. We’ll see where everything sits but it is great to be in a healthy position in our pool or conference and whether you need two more wins or whatever – now you are in a position where you can be top. We weren’t in that position last year and you are looking at all the different permutations. They are all much simpler for us now. Ideally, score four tries because we have a decent bank of points at the moment.”
Meanwhile, Gloucester boss George Skivington said he had ‘no regrets’ after watching his heavily-rotated team ship 57 points at the RDS.
“If someone could show me a better way of resting players then I will be very welcome to it, because we spent hours thinking how we would do it and in the end there was only one obvious solution which was this week,” Skivington said.
No regrets. The markers I set out for those lads was that they stayed in the fight, did the basics and tried to execute and we will see where we get to. They certainly fought hard and we put Leinster under a bit of pressure but they were too good and we couldn’t get over the line. It would have been nice to get a try but no regrets.
“My reasons were because that (Premiership) bye week which we planned for got taken away.
“I’ve just got to manage Gloucester the best I can throughout the season so from my point of view I am not devaluing it (the Champions Cup) at all. I hope one day we can be firing on all fronts.
“I think it’s the best competition in rugby. When the bye week got taken away I was as devastated as anyone because I would have loved to come here full throttle and Leinster would be the acid marker for us to see how far we have or haven’t come either way. From that point of view I was very excited when the fixture list came out six months ago but some bad stuff has happened in the Premiership and we’re the team that has suffered for that in our planning.”
Skivington added that he is planning to field a stronger selection when Leinster make the return trip over to Kingsholm next month.
“Our plan at this stage is that we will go hard, yeah.”
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Originally published at 07.30
