Kiwi who wears his harp on his sleeve

KURT McQUILKIN INTERVIEWAn integral feature of Leinster's march to the Heineken Cup final has been their uncompromising tackling. Gerry Thornleytalks to their defensive coach, former Irish international Kurt McQuilkin

GOING INTO last week's semi-final, the statistic which accompanied Leinster had been their failure to score a try in their three previous Heineken Cup matches. Arising from that semi-final, the more pertinent stat now is that they've only conceded one try in their last three cup matches - and just four in their eight games en route to the final.

Their defensive coach, Kurt McQuilkin, and his players, must be doing something right, as a striking feature of the knockout wins over Harlequins and Munster especially is how much each player now palpably trusts his team-mates as well as not wanting to let anyone else down. He's now there almost two full seasons, and therefore it makes sense the players are becoming even more assured in his methods and in trusting each other on the pitch.

Facing a seemingly rampant, in-form Munster - who had scored 36 tries in a 10-game winning streak and had only been kept tryless in two games this season - was McQuilkin and Leinster's biggest challenge of the season.

He is chatting away as amicably as ever in his old haunt of Bective Rangers, where he first landed in Ireland back in 1992, and happily admits: "Watching the Ospreys game I thought 'here we go, they're going to come at us'. And obviously the two games we played against them this season they'd run pretty hard at us and opened us up a couple of times. I think a lot of it was line speed. We knew we had to keep at them consistently over 80 minutes which is something we did reasonably well against Harlequins, but in the Munster game we just kept coming hard at them all day."

As much as anything it was the regularity with which Leinster players made offensive hits on the Munster side of the gain line, and forced turnovers in contact, which rattled the champions and set Leinster humming. "Once the Wallaces and O'Connells get some speed up, at best your going to 'soak' or even miss. So we got up and we made a lot of impact hits behind their gain line, which is what we wanted."

Watching Leinster's defensive alignment closely again, it's noticeable not only how quickly their blue line pushes up, but then checks to allow themselves time to make the correct decisions, all of which is grand in theory but can only work when you have possibly the best defender in the world in the key, decision-making position of outside centre.

Critically, Brian O'Driscoll had been missing at Thomond Park three weeks before for the Magners League meeting, and this also obliged Gordon D'Arcy to play at outside centre for the first time in years. Who knows how much the latter's three missed tackles that night did for his Lions' hopes, but back in familiar terrain he had probably his most complete performance since returning from his year-long absence.

"It's a totally different scene," admits McQuilkin, himself a former outhalf turned inside centre, "12 and 13 are totally different. There's so much more coverage at 13. At 12 you can move either side, and you need to do it well, but at 13 there's so much more scope and I think when Drico is on his game defensively - and there's not many times he isn't - he does it as well as anyone."

All that being said, when Lifeimi Mafi freed his hands from the combined efforts of D'Arcy and Rocky Elsom in the sixth minute, and Keith Earls took his superb line, even O'Driscoll was reduced to a spectator.

"A brilliant line," concedes McQuilkin. "That sort of brought us down to earth a bit, but what I liked about it - even when we broke, our scramble got back. Rocky Elsom then showed his nous in defence, he didn't magnetise towards the ruck, he kept his width, stayed back and, okay, he could have been a step offside," adds McQuilkin with a broad smile, "but made a great impact shot on Dowling. It was probably one of the key moments of the match."

McQuilkin watched the game from pitch side and in the second half when Munster began pummelling Leinster closer in, once going 22 phases, he admits that the defensive effort then made the hairs stand up on the back of his neck.

"Michael (Cheika) had built them up nicely during the week," says McQuilkin, raising the palm of his hand upwards to emphasise the point. "It was good and relaxed, bringing them up to the boil and there was just a real calmness about the way they went into the game. They knew if we hit all the right straps we weren't going to be beaten and they definitely went out with that attitude. Even if Munster had scored (from Earls' early break) I still believe that the way our attack was going we still would have won the game. We were just in the zone."

Comparisons with Munster, especially in Europe, had been fairly odious from a Leinster perspective and even though it's a final, Leinster won't nurture such a seething resentment about Leicester.

"We're aware of that, but in fairness to Cheks and all the coaching staff and the players themselves, straight after the game on Saturday they said 'right, this has been a great win, a momentous occasion but we haven't won anything yet'. And to do ourselves justice and Munster justice we've got to go on and do a job in the final. So it was pretty level-headed. Yeah, everyone patted each other on the back but we knew we had to get on; we've got a bigger job in hand."

Even in the mighty defensive effort away to Harlequins in the quarter-final Leinster had to scramble more, and McQuilkin also concedes "If you look where Harlequins attacked us, they came around that D1/D2 area, close to the ruck. And although the boys D'ed up very well, Munster hit us around the ruck, hit us wide, up the middle. They dragged us around the place and for that reason it was probably a better performance. It really showed that our line speed was hitting its straps."

McQuilkin talks about Leicester's physicality, their rangy backrowers, Geordan Murphy and the return of Alesana Tuilagi, their mix of physicality and athleticism out wide, and concludes: "Personally I think we're going to have to amp up our defence by another 10 per cent. We've got to get up, keep improving.

"There are still areas of our game that we need to improve on from that Munster game. We've discussed that and we're going to put it right over the next couple of weeks."

You ask him what areas and he says: "Our alignment was a bit sloppy at times. It was more sort of early on in the match."

The laid-back Kiwi is something of an oddity as a defensive coach in rugby union in that he didn't serve time in rugby league. Indeed, until Tony McGahan and Les Kiss came along from Australia, it almost seemed compulsory to have a northern English accent.

Admittedly, like others who specialise in this aspect of coaching, his conversation is littered with dialogue unique to their job specifications, such as "our D" defence, line speed, coming off the line, impact hits and "our scramble".

The one-time nuggetty inside centre from King's Country, who won five caps for Ireland and played five years for Leinster, explains with a self-deprecating laugh that: "I've always had an interest in defence. I guess as a player I had to do a lot more tackling because I didn't run around people, so I always had an interest."

He's a keen student of others in his domain, and cites watching a Munster defensive session under Tony McGahan when he was in the IRFU High Performance Unit.

"That was really good. I enjoyed watching him coaching, he's a top-class coach. Les Kiss too, I've talked to a lot of guys like that. Of course you've got to have your own approach. I had my own approach and system but you learn a hell of a lot off the McGahans, the Kisses, those sort of guys."

McQuilkin says that he enjoyed tackling as a player, which partly explains his career path, and in the latter few years of his career envisaged coaching to some degree, if only at club level.

In 2003 he returned to New Zealand as a regional development officer lwith the NZRFU, and was asked, along with John Mitchell's brother, Paul, to coach the King Country NPC side.

"I enjoyed it, so I said 'what the hell'. We were co-coaches, so I was doing the backs, and attack and defence, for two seasons and then the opportunity came to come back and join the (IRFU) high performance unit, so I thought I'd keep the hand in (coaching) and helped out a little bit with Greystones."

His job spec with the HPU was as an analyst, which meant mostly analysing games on his laptop as opposed to working on the training ground.

"I need to be outdoors and more hands on, so thank God 'Cheks' gave me a call. I was doing a defensive role with the Irish Under-19s at the World Cup up in Belfast when I got a call from him asking me 'do I fancy it?' I nearly took his arm off and it kicked on from there; I was pretty lucky."

The IRFU seconded McQuilkin on to the Leinster ticket last season, but this season he jumped aboard full-time, with all the greater job insecurities that go with coaching.

"It's a job I love. Okay, it could be a pretty short career but you don't want to die wondering either."

It's in his blood too, for his father, Noel, coached for over three decades, and it was through his dad's time at Bective that McQuilkin kick-started his life-changing move to Ireland. In 1992, aged 26, he was playing for a team called Consett, the highest point in the north-east of England, when he injured his knee and visited his parents for Christmas in Dublin.

"Bective said, 'Would you fancy staying on for a season?' and I thought, 'What the hell, I might as well'. And it just kicked on from there," he says, chuckling at the way his career and life have just blown happily along, and also took in a time with Lansdowne.

He looks at the modern-day game and, by comparison to his playing days, describes players nowadays as both athletes and machines. "The fitness, the physique, the style of game they play - it's so high-intensity, high-impact stuff now too when you get into that contact zone - yeah, it's just a quicker game all-round, more of a spectacle. Everything is on speed, pace and power."

Under Cheika, he says, the players have become more hard-edged, and harder on themselves. "The players themselves do a lot of governing within the squad, which is good. He's put in a good structure there and they're mentally tougher. Perhaps back in our day we were happier just to get close. I remember when I was here, we beat Leicester one week and the following week lost to Milan - just not tough enough."

Some things haven't changed, mind. "He's my biggest critic - still," chuckles McQuilkin of his father. "They get the games live back in New Zealand on the rugby channel, so he gives me 'a wrack' every now and then."

He loves the training sessions, the buzz of match day, the one-on-one video sessions. "I just love the whole scene. It's very demanding. You wouldn't be voted best dad in Ireland, because so many of your weekends are gone but you make up for that. You do big hours but you don't really know you are, which shows it's a good job."

With his wife, Barbara, they have two daughters, Ella, aged eight and born in Ireland, and Lily, five years old and born in New Zealand. He has another year left on his contract, and after that he says "What will be, will be. I'm thoroughly enjoying it. If at the end of the contract we all decide to part our ways I've thoroughly enjoyed it".

He'll enjoy a whole lot more, of course, if his adopted province lifts the big one. "Although I'm not a born and bred Leinsterman, having played for Leinster and captained Leinster, seeing Leinster lift the Heineken Cup would be the bees' knees as far as I'm concerned. Take all the job prospects and that out of it, it would just be great to see someone with the harp on his jersey lifting the cup."