Defeat doesn’t come with serious consequences. That is one of Leinster’s biggest problems.
Everyone moves on too easily from Champions Cup misfires, vows to do better next time, and it won’t be long before the players are filling up their Instagram accounts with holiday snaps, product placements and artfully framed shots of flat whites.
The sweat from vain pursuit of superior Bordeaux players hadn’t dried when Caelan Doris and Leo Cullen were finding reasons to look forward in Bilbao.
Too little, too late: Leinster were blown away by Bordeaux in the Champions Cup final
Doris talked of his faith in the structures and players to deliver European success, despite a near-decade’s worth of evidence arguing otherwise.
He said the squad was motivated to use the URC as a way of bidding farewell to departing players.
It all sounded too easy, too comfortable, too painless.
Players are accustomed to furnishing the press with hollow platitudes after matches, but even by that measure, the attempts to argue that the URC was somehow adequate compensation for humiliation in the biggest match of the season beggared belief.
It was Cullen that made that case, interjecting when a reporter asked Doris about Leinster’s record of losing finals. ‘Were you at the URC final last year?’ he asked.
Trying to equate the importance of the two competitions made Cullen sound frankly deluded.
That’s how it’s done: Leo Cullen congratulates Bordeaux attack coach Noel McNamara
It had echoes of Felipe Contepomi upbraiding a group of journalists after Leinster won the Magners League in May 2008, complaining that the media down-played the competition.
That victory was important in the development of that group, who would be European champions within a year, but Contepomi’s case that it merited comparison with the European Cup was laughable, especially when Munster would conquer the continent weeks after Leinster took the consolation prize.
The Champions Cup is the only relevant measure of success, and by that standard, Leinster have failed and failed again.
And bromides about going again simply shouldn’t cut it in professional sport.
There are amateur GAA teams cut less slack than Leinster have been this past week.
Look at the reluctance to question the future of Cullen, with attempts to saddle Jacques Nienaber with all the blame for two successive pratfalls in the competition. That experiment has obviously been a failure, but Cullen is the overseer who decided that bringing in a world-class coach who specialises in defence was the way that Leinster could end the wait for European silverware.
Proven record: Leinster senior coach Jacques Nienaber has won two World Cups
It was a daring move, which if nothing else illustrates the club’s heavyweight status in Europe – and exposes his talk of French ‘juggernaut’ clubs.
By moving so radically from an attacking focus to defensive resilience as the basis of the team’s tactics, Cullen was counting on Nienaber’s methods showing Leinster another way to glory.
It hasn’t worked, and there’s a good case for agreeing an end to the arrangement with the South African even with a year left on his contract.
But the contention that Nienaber was the problem, a two-time World Cup winner and a man who could well be involved in a bid for a third with a mooted return to the Springboks, is risible.
Irish rugby has a habit of bundling problems up with an imported coach and shipping him off, as Munster did with Rob Penney.
Cullen is the man in charge, though, a towering figure in the history of Irish professional rugby but a man whose future in the Leinster hotseat should be dominating discussion.
His determination to stay in the role doesn’t mean he should get to do so, and there’s no obvious reason to believe he can reboot this team. High-achieving environments make big demands of everyone involved, and especially those in charge.
Moving on: Leo Cullen tried to strike a positive tone despite Leinster’s final hammering
That should go for the players too, but partly by dint of the finite number of professional players in the Irish system, and the necessity to tie down Test stars through central contracts, the big names are protected from the risk of being moved on if they don’t perform.
This has been the basis of a remarkable two decades for the Irish game, but there is a danger that players can get too comfortable in a familiar environment.
That will have repercussions at Test level eventually.
Leinster need to change.
Denying that reality condemns them to further failure.
