{"id":131122,"date":"2025-10-19T00:50:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T00:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/131122\/"},"modified":"2025-10-19T00:50:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T00:50:08","slug":"leo-cullen-says-his-leinster-side-just-not-battle-hardened-at-the-moment-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/131122\/","title":{"rendered":"Leo Cullen says his Leinster side \u2018just not battle-hardened at the moment\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leinster<\/a> head coach Leo Cullen<\/a> said that his players lacked composure after their first defeat in two years to Munster<\/a>. Despite taking the lead in the game to go 7-0 ahead, Cullen also added that his team were not battle-hardened after conceding four tries in the 31-14 defeat in Croke Park.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe started the second half pretty well, I thought, and we\u2019re in good position,\u201d said Cullen. \u201cWe have a lineout and we have lots of these pick-and-go opportunities close to the try line.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut Munster are just so effective and we\u2019re just lacking a bit of composure there. Is that because it\u2019s the first game of the season for a lot of guys or whatever that is? Or is it Munster are very good and we\u2019re just not quite accurate enough? There\u2019s a few different factors there at play.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the biggest kicks in the teeth on the night was that Munster outworked Leinster to get the deserved win and then when the pressure came on they were able to knock back the blue shirts, preventing them from scoring in the second half until the game was practically over.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got to understand, to get to the pitch of a game, you\u2019ve got to play some games,\u201d said Cullen.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of those guys for Munster … listen they\u2019ve played at least two of the three URC games and some of them played in the warm-up games before, so that\u2019s the battle-hardened piece. We\u2019re just not battle-hardened at the moment.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not sure exactly what the solution is for us moving forward. How we get to that physical pitch and speed of playing games.<\/p>\n

\u201cListen, we need to analyse what we do there for future seasons because what we\u2019ve done this year clearly hasn\u2019t worked out. We\u2019ve lost three of the last four games.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cullen added that while it was a tough defeat for Leinster to take, serendipity may kick in and the loss could provide some immediate benefits for his players with the next URC match against Italian side Parma.<\/p>\n

\"LeinsterLeinster outhalf Sam Prendergast is tackled during the match at Croke Park. Photograph: Dan Sheridan\/Inpho <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a good wake-up for the group, isn\u2019t it? We had a group that was out in South Africa, and we have a cohort of the Lions guys. It\u2019s always going to be a bit of a sticky start to the season for us. We\u2019ve talked about it over the last while and now we\u2019re seeing it unfold,\u201d said Cullen.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou talk about it and hope that that\u2019s not going to be the case, but you\u2019re marking everyone\u2019s card, our own in particular. We\u2019ve still got to go through it and we weren\u2019t good enough today. But the big thing is composure, taking opportunities. Munster were a hell of a lot better than we were.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Leinster had plenty of their Lions players available, it was Munster captain Tadhg Beirne who stood out with a typical physical and gritty contribution, especially when Leinster flared up just after the break.<\/p>\n

Cullen was asked if that was another disappointing aspect of his team\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah. It\u2019s disappointing. It\u2019s disappointing for the fans who turn out to watch,\u201d said the Leinster coach. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m disappointed we didn\u2019t give a better account of ourselves for sure because we\u2019re down that end of the field. We\u2019re doing everything bar getting to that last one or two metres.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow many times do we get held up versus Munster take the corner and they get in for that try, which looks relatively easy. We\u2019re in the position, sequences of probably 12 sequences where you might have five to six carries that are similar to that. So if I\u2019m looking back at the review, that\u2019s what I would be looking at, first and foremost. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhy are these guys that bit hungrier than us? Are we talking about saying we\u2019re this and this. It\u2019s making sure that we all try and own it.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leinster head coach Leo Cullen said that his players lacked composure after their first defeat in two years…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131123,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[18,19,17,12861,53475,12311,132,42271],"class_list":{"0":"post-131122","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-leinster-rugby","12":"tag-leo-cullen","13":"tag-munster-rugby","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-united-rugby-championship"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}