All planes, trains and automobiles will lead to the Basque Country in three weekends’ time when, for the first time ever, Irish sides will contest both the Champions Cup and Challenge Cup finals.
Leinster will meet Bordeaux-Bègles in the former, which is already a sell-out, while Ulster will face Montpellier the night before, and the clamour for tickets, and any remaining overpriced hotel rooms in Bilbao, will be intensified by Bordeaux fans being less than a four-hour drive away.
Leinster will be underdogs against the reigning champions when the sides meet for the first time on Saturday May 23rd (kick-off 3.45pm local time/2.45pm Irish). But Leo Cullen is picking up good vibes about a return to the San Mamés Stadium, the scene of Leinster’s fourth and most recent Champions Cup success, a 15-12 victory over Racing in the 2017-18 final.
“It’s amazing to go to Bilbao again, against whoever that will be,” said Cullen after his side’s 29-25 semi-final win over Toulon at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday and before Bordeaux-Bègles beat Bath 38-26 in the Stade Atlantique.
“The English champions are just getting better all the time over the last two seasons and Bordeaux have been the best team in Europe and you see the X-factor they have and Noel, who we would know very well,” said Cullen of the Bordeaux attack coach Noel McNamara, who had various coaching roles in the Leinster pathway from 2016 to 2021.
“Bilbao is a cool place, isn’t it, and [so is] the Sam Mamés Stadium,” added Cullen, picking up those vibes again.
This will be Leinster’s fifth final since that 2018 triumph and a record ninth overall, something for which they don’t receive nearly enough credit.
Leinster’s Tommy O’Brien reacts as the final whistle in the semi-final confirms Leinster will be heading to another Champions Cup final. Photograph: Ben Brady/Inpho
“It’s not a failure going to a final. Not getting to the competition, that would be a team failure,” said Cullen, whose team has continued to bounce back from knock-out blows ever since that 2018 final.
“That’s what it’s about, isn’t it? What else would you be doing? It’s a great way to feel alive. My poor son, he had to leave at half-time,” said Cullen with a chuckle in reference to the challenge posed by the yellow cards shown to Andrew Porter and Harry Byrne in quick succession at the end of Saturday’s first half. “He said: ‘Dad, we’ve no chance, we’ve 13 men now’. He had to leave and go home. He couldn’t take it.”
Still, as at half-time on Saturday, his players and coaches keep regrouping, despite still nursing scars from last season’s semi-final loss to Northampton.
Cullen was in quite prickly mood after the game.
“It won’t be easy, will it? We’ll have no chance anyway. We’ve been bloody useless this year,” he said sarcastically.
Cullen is evidently still annoyed about his side not being awarded a late penalty try in last season’s 37-34 semi-final loss to Northampton, when Henry Pollock went off his feet under the Leinster posts. This was also part of a general broadside at the media in which he thrice used the words “you guys love putting the boot into us”.
So what brought that on?
Leinster’s Josh van der Flier is congratulated after his try against Toulon on Saturday. Photograph: Brian Lawless/PA Wire
“We don’t necessarily want the credit, it’s just balance about what happens in the game. Some strange things happened in that Northampton game and nobody wanted to report on them, did they? Did you report on the penalty try not awarded at the end of the game? Did you report on Pollock – should have been a penalty under the posts?
“Bad news sells,” he said, before agreeing that Leinster reaching the final was “good news”.
Leinster laid a few ghosts to rest against Toulon, but Cullen admitted the strength of their yearning for an elusive fifth crown affected Saturday’s performance.
“You can see that there’s a natural bit of, I don’t know, is it tension or what is it? There’s definitely something in the performance there that we’re not quite ‘free’. They’re all humans. They’re all trying to learn as they go along because they want something so badly.
“That’s the thing about the tournament. You’ve heard some players talk about an obsession. It’s a magic tournament, isn’t it? That’s why it’s so amazing. Teams put everything into it. You’re down to the last four teams but think of some of the teams that are not in the last four. There’s some unbelievable teams not there.
“On we go. Bilbao here we come, but we’re here against the Lions first,” he said of next Saturday’s URC game at the Aviva Stadium against the team above them in third place on points difference.
Eight of the 23 against Toulon were in the matchday squad in the San Mamés Stadium eight years ago, and two others, Tadhg Furlong and James Lowe, will hope to prove their fitness in one or both of Leinster’s two games before the final.
“There will clearly be changes for that because it is freshness, it is giving guys who are fully motivated and invested, and there are still places up for grabs for the final as well because lots of things can happen, as we know.”