Champions Cup: It’s no wonder Leinster have come to like their home from home

In one respect for sure, Leinster are the envy of everyone else in European rugby. Just a 15-minute walk from the RDS, the Aviva has long since become Leinster’s lucrative home from home, both on and off the pitch, albeit in both ways today’s semi-final constitutes something of an acid test.

If ever a game merited being a sell-out it is surely this clash between the two most successful grandees in the history of the Heineken Champions Cup.

As of yesterday, ticket sales had almost hit 44,000, so there will at least be a fitting sense of occasion and an appropriate backdrop for the TV cameras. And therein lies another rub, for Irish terrestrial TV will be present at a semi-final involving an Irish team on Irish soil for only the second time since Munster beat Leinster 30-6 at the old Lansdowne Road in 2006.

Even so, with three weeks to sell the game, there should have been a capacity crowd in attendance today.

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Ticket sales for the Round of 16 and quarter-final ties against Ulster and Leicester, which drew a capacity 51,700 and a restricted capacity of 27,000 at just a week’s notice, were under Leinster’s remit. Similarly, for the same semi-final matchup last season, with just six days to sell tickets, the European Professional Club Rugby (EPCR) handed ticket sales over to Leinster, and the match drew 42,076.

This time the semi-finals, as has always been the case, fall under the auspices of the EPCR. With that in mind, the 2019 semi-final between today’s protagonists drew 42,961, and that was on Virgin Media TV.

Admittedly too, with Sunday’s game between La Rochelle and Exeter in Bordeaux a 42,000-plus sell-out, the aggregate attendance for the two EPCR semi-finals will be the highest since 2017.

Nevertheless, the first mistake the EPCR appear to have made was to give the ticket selling strategy to the IRFU, and the union’s first mistake was to offer the first batch of tickets to their own 10-year ticket holders rather than Leinster’s season ticket holders and supporters club.

As a result, relations between the EPCR and Leinster are strained.

Leinster are more experienced than the IRFU in marketing and selling tickets for games involving their own provincial team, especially when moving matches to the Aviva.

No family packages have been put on sale, and there have been no tickets for less than €75 for some time. Leinster would have set aside some of the former and been more inventive in their pricing, especially amid a surfeit of Aviva games at a time when supporters are being asked to renew their season tickets (which go on public sale this weekend).

True, as an EPCR game, the tournament organisers keep the gate receipts from the semi-finals and final. The home club or province keep the receipts from their pool games, home quarterfinals and, in the latter two seasons, home Round of 16 ties.

Setting aside 20 per cent expenses, such as hiring the ground from the IRFU for about €310,000-€320,000, by moving to a bigger venue Leinster’s share of the gate receipts is increased from 50 per cent to 65 per cent. If the Aviva is close to a sell-out, that is likely to generate gate receipts of about €1.5 million. Leinster can therefore generate €750,000-€800,000 from a home quarter-final, albeit half of this also goes to the IRFU. A home quarter-final is a financial boon for the provinces, and even more so for the IRFU, not to mention a handy chunk of change for visiting teams.

But come a semi-final such as this, Leinster would not have been motivated by financial gain. Rather, as was the case last year, in doing what is best for their team.

Leo Cullen’s back room staff and playing squad place a huge emphasis on obtaining home advantage in the knock-out stages and the head coach, by his standards, even issued a slight rebuke to the tournament organisers last Monday.

“It’s got slightly different challenges from the quarter-final and last 16, so we hope fans understand that,” Cullen said.

“It’s an EPCR-run event. The week doesn’t flow quite the same as per the participation agreement that we signed up for.

“It’s just so that supporters know that. It’s different things about what time the Captain’s Run is on, how tickets sales work.

“You navigate those issues and as a team you try to deliver as best you possibly can. We put a huge amount of effort [into earning a home semi-final]. It’s a credit to the players and staff.”

Perhaps the rebuke also betrayed frustration over the undeserved perception that Leinster are warm favourites against such pedigree opposition.

[ Toulouse head coach believes loss of Sexton and Lowe will upset Leinster’s patterns ]

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“You’ve got this number one seeding, but what does that get you? You’re just at home, you’ve still got to go out and deliver,” Cullen said.

“The dynamic was different last year with the quarter-final and semi-final [back-to-back]. This year both teams have rested up their teams and so you come off a break and you’re never quite sure.

“We’ve done a lot of work to ensure that we are here. Supporters don’t have to get on flights to somewhere else. We didn’t have top seeding [last season], we were in a quarter-final away in Welford Road and the final was in Marseilles.

“It’s just focusing on delivering as best we possibly can with the hand that we’re dealt because there’s so many different variables, isn’t there?”

One of those, though he didn’t say it, being that Leinster didn’t oversee the semi-final ticket strategy.

Perhaps there’s an element of Aviva fatigue at work too. Save for the all-conquering double campaign of 2017-18 when Leinster won all five games there that season, and the more recent lockdown years, when they played two, three or four matches at most at the Aviva. Its novelty value was part of its allure.

But on top of five games at the Aviva last season, today’s semi-final will be their fifth again in this campaign, with the potential for another four if Leinster reach both the Champions Cup and URC finals. And all of this in the wake of the Ireland-France epic and Grand Slam coronation against England!

The RDS and Leinster have an agreement regarding additional events and matches, and as the RDS is hosting Bruce Springsteen on May 3rd, 5th and 7th, Leinster will have to play their URC quarter-final against the Sharks next Saturday at the Aviva.

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Leinster would have had to pay an agreed fee to the RDS for hosting additional knock-out games in the arena, but to reduce the costs of hiring the Aviva for the Sharks’ game, they are only opening the lower tier, meaning a restricted capacity of 19,000.

For the surface to recover from the Springsteen concerts, the RDS will be out of commission for Leinster for the remainder of the season. Hence, were they to beat Sharks, Leinster will also host a putative semi-final against Glasgow or Munster a week later with another restricted capacity at the Aviva.

Were Leinster to reach the final, it too would be held at the Aviva, but without restrictions as it is a “URC game” and there’s a two-week lead-in.

Ask most Leinster players and their preference would be a full RDS rather than a half-full Aviva. Given the choice of the two bursting to capacity and they would readily go for the bigger stadium every time. But they also understand the economics at play.

Time was when the Leinster players would have much preferred Donnybrook to Lansdowne Road. Back in 2002-03, they earned a home quarter-final against Biarritz, which they won, and drew a home semi-final against Perpignan, with the final also set for Lansdowne Road. All had seemingly been set up perfectly for Matt Williams’ team.

Of course, they tripped up in the semi-final, leading to an all-French final between Toulouse and Perpignan. (Two years later, Leinster earned another home quarter-final, against Leicester, but were well beaten, although a capacity full house of 48,500 helped ease the pain.)

Ulster having won the first Lansdowne Road final in 1999 against Colomiers, a tad unnervingly the only final in Dublin since 2003 came in 2013, when Toulon beat Clermont. So, another decade on, Leinster are trying to ensure another all-French final cannot happen again.

Lamentable though the atmosphere can be, for Irish games in particular, the Aviva has become far more of a fortress than the old Lansdowne Road ever was – and that goes for both Ireland and Leinster.

Ireland are on an all-time record winning home run of 14 matches and, of course, the bulk of this Leinster team have been part of that sequence.

Leinster themselves have played 43 matches at the Aviva since hosting Munster at the redeveloped stadium in October 2010. They have an impressive 38 wins, with just five defeats; Champions Cup pool losses to Clermont, Northampton and Toulon between 2012-13 and 2015-16, a loss to Munster in October 2014, and the quarter-final loss to Saracens in 2020.

Currently Leinster are on a nine-game winning run at the Aviva since that defeat by Saracens which was, of course, behind closed doors. They have otherwise won 27 of their last 28 games there.

In the knock-out stages of the Champions Cup, Leinster have won 13 out of 14, and this includes all four semi-finals – three of which have been against Toulouse. But perhaps the most interesting statistic of all is that in their last 23 matches in front of their own supporters at the Aviva, dating back to that defeat by Toulon in December 2015, Leinster have won the lot.

A winning and profitable five-minute drive away, no wonder they’ve come to like their home from home.

Leinster’s record at the Aviva Stadium:

• Played 43
• Won 38
• Drew 0
• Lost 5

Champions Cup overall:

• Played 26
• Won 22
• Drew 0
• Lost 4

Champions Cup knock-out stages:

• Played 14
• Won 13
• Drew 0
• Lost 1

Champions Cup semi-finals:

• Played 4
• Won 4
• Drew 0
• Lost 0