{"id":73167,"date":"2025-05-04T06:29:10","date_gmt":"2025-05-04T06:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/73167\/"},"modified":"2025-05-04T06:29:10","modified_gmt":"2025-05-04T06:29:10","slug":"leo-cullen-believes-he-is-man-to-lead-leinster-forward-despite-loss-to-northampton-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/73167\/","title":{"rendered":"Leo Cullen believes he is man to lead Leinster forward despite loss to Northampton \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leinster <\/a>coach Leo Cullen<\/a> said that he was confident that he could lead his team to a Champions Cup, and that he was the person to lead the organisation forward, following Saturday\u2019s 34-37 defeat to Northampton in the semi-final of the Champions Cup<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Leinster made it to the last three finals of the competition, but lost out in all three games to La Rochelle (twice) and Toulouse.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, I think I am. Yeah. I believe that I am, yes,\u201d said Cullen.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we\u2019ve worked hard to try and improve the group year-on-year and I think the group is very strong right now. As I said, that\u2019s not something that\u2019s just created last week, it\u2019s year-on-year – and I think we\u2019ve a stronger group now.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve lost three finals over the last three years, yeah, but I believe we\u2019ve a stronger group now than we\u2019ve had and that\u2019s the way I will continue to approach the day-to-day in terms of preparing the short term, medium term, long term. So, yes. And I\u2019m very committed to that as well.\u201d <\/p>\n

Cullen summed up the Leinster dressing room as a \u201csombre place\u201d and the feelings of the Leinster players in the Aviva Stadium as \u201cpretty horrific.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hot favourites to make their passage safely through to the final in Cardiff later this month, Leinster\u2019s inaccuracy and poor showing in the first half of the match led to their demise.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the dressing room it\u2019s a pretty sombre place as you can imagine,\u201d said Cullen. \u201cYou set off at the start of the season and you know the final is in Cardiff. Everything is building towards that. Everyone is imagining themselves, every team, I\u2019m sure, is imagining themselves there in the final.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is so, so much work that goes into a team getting to a semi-final\u2026when you lose it is pretty horrific and that is the feeling we are experiencing at the moment, because I think it was one of those games. You\u2019d love to have another crack at it straight away. But unfortunately, you don\u2019t get that opportunity and that\u2019s sport.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"NorthamptonNorthampton Saints’ Alex Mitchell is tackled by Jordie Barrett of Leinster – Barrett was introduced to the game in the 50th minute. Photograph: Laszlo Geczo\/Inpho <\/p>\n

Cullen pointed to Northampton\u2019s scoring ability and the hattrick scored by their strike runner, right wing Tommy Freeman, in the first half. Even when Leinster threw everything at them in the dying stages, Northampton held strong.<\/p>\n

\u201cNorthampton were excellent I thought. We sat here yesterday talking about how strong Northampton are, in terms of some of their attacking threats and what they are capable of doing,\u201d said Cullen. \u201cI think we saw that in lots of different parts of the game. I think we did plenty of good things. I think we were maybe inaccurate in stages in the first half. <\/p>\n

\u201cI thought Northampton were very good in terms of some of their counterattack and they hit us on the counter a couple of times with some suckerpunch tries. Tommy Freeman … I thought he was excellent in terms of his speed, the finish. He scores his hat-trick in the first half. Quite often when you fall behind we get a little bit jittery, don\u2019t we, and we\u2019re not quite accurate enough in some of the things we do, and we compound errors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cullen added that he had no regrets about keeping All Black Jordie Barrett on the bench until the second half of the match.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, listen, I will look back on lots of different things, over the course of the next few weeks,\u201d said Cullen. \u201cAnd, yes, when you don\u2019t win a game, particularly in a semi-final, everyone is going to second-guess everything. <\/p>\n

\u201cListen, Jordie brought huge impact, and that is what we wanted from him. Similar with Jack Conan, as well, and a lot of other players that were on the bench. You look at us at the end of the game – we looked like a strong team, attacking the game. There\u2019s probably bits before where we weren\u2019t quite accurate enough. But I don\u2019t have regrets about that plan, specifically.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leinster coach Leo Cullen said that he was confident that he could lead his team to a Champions…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73168,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4102],"tags":[2383,4511,30724,36300,4151,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-73167","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-champions-cup","9":"tag-jordie-barrett","10":"tag-leinster-rugby","11":"tag-leo-cullen","12":"tag-rugby","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114448155548402227","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}