‘Relieved’ Leo Cullen says Leinster will not rest players between now and Champions Cup final

Leo Cullen says Leinster will pick “strong teams” in the two URC matches between now and the Champions Cup final against Toulouse or Harlequins at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in three weeks’ time.

Leinster rested the majority of their frontline players for their recent tour of South Africa between their quarter-final win over La Rochelle and Saturday evening’s narrow victory over Northampton Saints, but they’re unlikely to do so again against Ospreys and Ulster.

The province won 20-17 in front of a record 82,300 crowd at Croke Park, with Northampton threatening a famous comeback during a nervous final quarter.

Leinster, who had led 20-3 in the minutes after half-time, went into their shells in the same manner as they did in last year’s final defeat to La Rochelle when they gave up a 17-point lead to lose to Ronan O’Gara’s side.

“I don’t know, 17 points was it?” said Cullen when asked if he saw parallels between this game and last year’s final across town at Lansdowne Road.

“We scored straight away after the second half and that was probably the difference. It was a little bit different in terms of the context of the game. The games are rarely the same, are they?

“You’re playing knock-out games, so the team that’s behind is going to be doing everything in their power to come back into the game and make it as tight as possible.

“You’re playing against teams that have got through some serious quality teams, so they’re high-quality teams at this stage of the competition.

“It’s not like anyone thinks we’re going to roll these guys over. Nobody is thinking that at any point. At 20 points to three we’re not thinking it.

“There’s always a bit where you can try sit and try manage the game out, but unfortunately you can manage ourselves into a bit of trouble if you do that.

“There’s also the opposition, and all the things that they’re doing. For a team that has such attacking threats, to hold them to just three points for as long as we did…and there’s probably other opportunities we had, but they would say the same. That’s what you get in a knock-out game of rugby.

“The most important thing is that you get over the line, and we managed to get over the line thankfully.

“The score goes to what, 20-3 pretty early in the second half, and then I suppose there’s a human nature part to it.

“You can try and sit and protect what you have. That can be the real challenge, can you try and push on at that stage? We maybe struggled with that a little bit, but credit to Northampton as well.

“They dug in well defensively and made life tough for us. We didn’t quite execute on certain things and they fight their way back into their game.

“They win a few 50:50 scraps and before you know it it’s down to the wire. There’s plenty of learnings there for our guys, some guys haven’t played in the last couple of weeks, does that have an effect? I don’t know.”

Two defeats in South Africa saw Leinster lose top spot in the URC and Cullen isn’t of a mind to wrap his players in cotton wool.

“We need to concentrate on the URC now for the next couple of weeks, so we’ll be picking strong teams,” he said.

“Listen, we’ve done enough to get through, we know we can be better, and that’s the bit we have to go after over the next couple of weeks.

“We’re back to URC action next week against Ospreys, and it’s important that we focus our attention on that now. We need to be able to move on to the next piece, and that will be our week now, the focus will be on Ospreys, and their singular focus. We need to give them the full respect next week.

“We’re delighted, a big thanks to everyone that comes out and supports the team. EPCR, to their credit, put on a great show as well, and we’re relieved to get through, we’re delighted to get through, and we just need to focus on improving our game, so we’re playing our best game for the final, but we’ll try and focus on playing a good game next week as well.”

For Cullen, who has spent the majority of his adult life with Leinster and has seen them grow from a small stadium at Donnybrook to selling out Croke Park it was a day to savour.

“Well, I think everyone was shocked in the most positive sense of the word when the tickets started going on sale and this thing is going to get sold out as quickly as it did,” he said.

“It was amazing the response really. We talked about it yesterday. It’s an unbelievable privilege for us to be here in front of a full house. It’s remarkable really.

“We’re relieved that we were able to get a win. There’s plenty of parts to the performance that we can improve upon.

“Ultimately the most important bit is to get through and now hopefully we have a good crowd over in Spurs stadium in a few weeks’ time.

“It was an amazing occasion, wasn’t it? We’re very appreciative of the support the team have had during the course of the season, but the lead-in to this game has been phenomenal.

“Certainly, we got 80 minutes of entertainment, a little bit too exciting maybe at the end, but credit to the players, I thought they dug in well. That’s not just the Leinster players, but Northampton, you have to give them a huge amount of credit, they fought to the very end.

They’ve been making unbelievable progress with the coaching group they have there. We dug in there at the end and we’re delighted to get into another final.”

Leinster find out their opponents for the final in tomorrow’s second semi-final.

Get ahead of the day with the morning headlines at 7.30am and Fionnán Sheahan’s exclusive take on the day’s news every afternoon, with our free daily newsletter.