Leinster reap reward of asking tough questions

FROM THE BLINDSIDE: The winning mentality necessary for two provinces to reach the Heineken Cup final now must be turned to the national team's advantage

THE HEINEKEN Cup never disappoints.

The last 10 minutes of Leinster’s game against Clermont on Sunday were what you keep coming back to this competition for.

Tension, guts, bodies on the line at every collision. It looked ominous for Leinster in the closing stages, but they defended like their lives depended on it. Clermont didn’t panic, they were calm and methodical and knew what they were trying to achieve with each pick and drive.

Yet they couldn’t find a way through. Or at least when they did, Wesley Fofana couldn’t ground the ball.

It’s hard to overstate what a difficult task Leinster had in keeping their line intact under that pressure. Especially against a team like Clermont who weren’t putting a foot wrong. At no stage did Clermont try a silly grubber kick or a huge skip pass that might have been intercepted.

They protected the ball, got their strike runners in position time after time and sent them at the line. Sometimes when you’re defending, the other team will help you out by losing their heads a little bit through frustration or nervousness or just too much adrenaline.

Apart from Fofana’s failed attempt, Clermont didn’t give them any help – and even in that case, Gordon D’Arcy’s tackle made it very hard for him.

Leinster are in a place now where these things don’t happen by coincidence. You can see it just by watching them that they have exactly the mentality that makes great teams. People often think words like desire, passion and will to win are kind of clichés at this stage, but watch the closing stages of that semi-final again and you’ll see that those things are such a huge part of it.

You have to find it in yourself to get up from one tackle to get in place to make the next one. That’s desire. That’s a winning mentality.

It’s what Leinster have as a group and it’s been made over a long period of years. Munster had it in a big way when they were winning Heineken Cups and Ulster are getting there with the group of players they have at the moment. But there’s no doubt Leinster have it in spades and that’s why they’re the best team in Europe.

If other teams aren’t envious of them, they should be. Leinster were, back when Munster were on a roll.

I was in the room with the Ireland squad before the Grand Slam campaign when Rob Kearney asked the big question – why did it seem that Munster players were performing better in red shirts than in green shirts?

Rob was a young guy, an up-and-coming player who hadn’t won a Heineken Cup at that stage and hadn’t won anything with Ireland either. He said straight out that he was envious of the way Munster players could find the fire in their bellies for big Heineken Cup games, how the collective will to win was so obvious.

There was a lot of respect for him in asking a question like that because it was an issue that had to be addressed and it probably needed somebody from outside of Munster to bring it up. Nobody ever held it against him. It was acknowledging that in Munster we had something the Ireland team needed to harness.

The wheel has come full circle now and you can’t watch Leinster these days without wondering the same thing. Leinster’s level of performance is so high and so clinical that you would think the national team should be reaping the benefit. But it’s the same scenario as when Munster were at our best – guys seem to perform better in a blue shirt than in a green one.

There are explanations for this. Obviously nobody goes out to try to underperform for their country or to put in less effort or show less passion. But there’s no doubt it can happen. It can come down to something as small as how comfortable you feel within a group. With your province, you’re training together, playing together, more or less living together.

You go to work every day, you go to lunch, you talk constantly. You have time to try things, to stay on after a weights session or to sit down and go through a video together. Even if it’s only slagging and messing you’re at, you’re still becoming a team with every interaction.

With the national team, everything is done to a schedule. You come together for such a short space of time and all that time is allotted. Even the downtime. The little pockets of time to gel and come together just don’t feel as natural. It’s a contrived situation in a way too. Guys are that bit more nervous because playing for your country is such a big deal so they’re having to try very hard to stay relaxed – if that makes any sense.

There’s a comfort zone when you’re among your own. The way I try to explain it to people is by getting them to imagine they’re working in the local bank down the country somewhere. They’ve been in their branch day-in-day-out for years and they know everyone and everyone knows them. They’re good at their job because they know the lie of the land around them.

Then one day they’re called to go to a conference in Dublin where they’re among people from all across the country. That comfort level is gone because the familiarity is gone and suddenly a little bit of the confidence they had back home ebbs away. So they begin to question themselves and maybe they don’t put forward this idea or that idea because they’re not sure how it will be received.

Strange as it may sound, switching from provincial mode to Ireland mode in rugby isn’t all that different. Even if you’ve been around a while and you’ve amassed a good few caps, it’s hard to feel totally comfortable. Coaches can do their best to create the environment where players know it’s okay to try things but it takes a special coach and a special bunch of players to get it right.

The margins are so small that it only takes a few guys within a team not hitting their potential for the team to be affected.

It’s a confidence thing as much as anything. I always felt when Munster were winning things that there was no match situation that was out of our reach. If somebody got a try against us, we knew not to panic. If someone knocked on the ball, if someone made a mistake, no problem. We just had that in-built belief that we would go down the field and do what we needed to do.

It’s all about attitude. We’ve all seen skilful teams in various different sports down the years who have been unbelievable to watch but didn’t have the attitude to close out a game. Leinster have all the skills but they’re hard as nails and they give you nothing easy. They have that attitude which says, “This is our game, our win”. Even as Clermont were pounding their line on Sunday, I still felt they would do it.

Maybe they were lucky that Fofana didn’t get the ball down but you can nearly be guaranteed that if he had, Leinster would have engineered a chance in the couple of minutes that were left.

Can’t you just see Johnny Sexton kicking the restart up the middle, Rob Kearney getting a touch on it to knock it back and Leinster going through a dozen phases to set up the shot at goal? They have this winning mentality now, this refusal to lose.

Three Heineken Cup finals in four years and all – coincidentally or not – since the day when Rob asked that question in that hotel in Enfield. I think he and the rest of the Leinster guys probably understand a bit better now how it can happen that your play better for your province than your country.

It’s not a conscious decision, it doesn’t mean you care more about one team over the other. But it can happen and it’s something for players to look out for. Especially now that we’re going into a Heineken Cup final with two Irish teams.

This is a unique situation, as big an event as Irish rugby has even seen. Think of the amount of experience there is going to be on that pitch in Twickenham in two and a half weeks’ time, think of the winning mentality that is present on both sides – not just Leinster.

It would be such a waste if we didn’t find a way to transfer that to the national side, whether it’s for New Zealand in the summer or in time for the Six Nations next year. Everybody involved in rugby here should enjoy the coming weeks because this is a massive achievement.

But when it’s all over, the national team has to benefit from it. That’s what the priority should be for everyone.