Leinster are finding their form at just the right time after successfully getting their South African tour moved to the start of the season, according to Bernard Jackman.
Since the inception of the United Rugby Championship in 2021, the Irish giants have made their trip to the Republic in either March or April, which is right around the time of the Investec Champions Cup knockouts.
That was until the 2025/26 campaign when Leo Cullen’s men started the URC with away games against the Stormers and the Bulls.
Although Leinster succumbed to successive defeats, forcing them to play catch-up for the rest of the league season, it got the difficult trip out of the way early.
Leinster’s request to the URC
Jackman claimed that the province requested to the URC organisers ‘quite strongly’ that their trip to South Africa was moved to earlier.
“Interestingly, I know that Leinster had lobbied the URC quite strong for at least a season, maybe two seasons, that they didn’t want to go to South Africa when they had been going to South Africa,” he told the RTE Rugby Podcast.
“If you remember, Leinster always got a fast start and then the frontliners stayed at home leading into knockout rugby to prepare for that, and that’s not good to split your squad.
“I understand completely why they did it (split their squad) as putting mileage on your best players at a time when most of them have already played a Six Nations, November series and helped you qualify for those knockout stages (can harm your chances).”
Leinster did not get their campaign off to a good start, losing three of their opening four league matches, but they finished the regular season strong and ended up second in the table behind Glasgow Warriors.
Without the distraction of having to go to South Africa, Cullen’s side have built nicely heading into the Champions Cup final and will look to win their first continental title since 2018 when they face Bordeaux-Begles on Saturday.
Leinster ‘look better for it’
“The fact that they got the URC to commit to change it to early in the season has meant that they were changing league position for a while, but effectively the two losses that they’ve had traditionally a little bit later happened at the start,” Jackman said.
“That did put a bit of pressure on them but it meant that for the last four or five weeks post-Six Nations Leinster have had all the group together and they look better for it.
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“I think there were seven starters that started against the Ospreys but they looked like a team that were very cohesive. The ones who didn’t play played the previous week.
“They’ve been at home, got the points and now they’re the second seed in the URC. They will worry about that afterwards and they won’t fear anyone in the URC regardless of it they have to go away in the final.
“Now they can play Bordeaux in Bilbao, go in there with a bit of momentum, a bit of confidence.”