Gerry Thornley: Maybe it’s good that defeat by Munster puts pressure on Leinster to beat La Rochelle

Leinster’s unexpected loss to Munster in last Saturday’s titanic URC semi-final has, at a stroke, distilled their season into one game and at least clarified the picture. But it has also undoubtedly heightened the pressure on them to beat La Rochelle. It’s next Saturday or bust in so many ways.

No matter how they or their supporters or anyone else looks at it, to come away empty-handed for the second season in succession, thus meaning only one Champions Cup in the last 11 seasons, would undoubtedly feel like an underachievement.

Ironically, this is in large part because of the brilliance of their rugby, especially in the last two campaigns. By any metric – tries scored, points scored, line breaks, most carries, etc – they were the best side in last season’s Champions Cup until the final. The same is true this season.

There has been plenty of misguided and ill-informed bleating about their supposed financial advantages, which is ironic given the budgets of French clubs and until recently English ones – whether in keeping with salary caps or not.

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Ditto their Aviva route to the final, which was earned by finishing top seeds, while the final itself is only in Dublin for the fourth time ever and the first time in a decade.

Furthermore, in the last seasons, Leinster lost a semi-final against Clermont in France, a final against Saracens in England, a semi-final away to La Rochelle and a final against La Rochelle in France. Leinster haven’t had a huge amount of luck in this time either, when you consider that the quarter-final defeat by Saracens in the Aviva Stadium was without their supporters in a Covid-enforced echo chamber.

Yet, of course, all these near misses before they finally earned a home route to a “home” final will only accentuate the sense of a lost opportunity were they not to win a fifth Champions Cup next Saturday.

It will ensure an increased element of knock-out baggage from next season onwards, with the nagging thought: when might such a hard-earned opportunity arise again? That is not a fitting legacy from Johnny Sexton’s brilliant 16-year career, nor Stuart Lancaster’s hugely influential seven seasons with the province. And, of course, not sending Sexton, Lancaster, Dave Kearney et al into the sunset in fitting fashion would make any loss feel even worse.

In all of this too, Leinster are victims of their own success, not least in winning the first four Champions Cup finals they contested. No other team in European rugby has ever done this. Toulon came closest when winning their three-in-a-row from 2013 to 2015. But when they contest Friday’s Challenge Cup final against Glasgow they do so in the acute knowledge that when they lost to Lyon by 30-12 in Marseilles last May, it was their fourth loss in four Challenge Cup finals.

Toulouse may be the ultimate aristocrats in Champions Cup rugby with their unequalled five stars, but they have also lost in two finals, not to mention three semi-finals in the last four seasons – twice to Leinster.

Finals are tough to get to. They’re meant to be. It’s an achievement to do so. Yet as well as being the best place to win, they’re also the worst place to lose. Runners-up medals aren’t really medals of honour, to be cherished. That’s one of the cruelties of sport. But they’re also often the toughest matches to win, and that’s because they’re meant to be.

Roger Federer, aka The King, retired with an imperious 20 Grand Slam titles, yet he also lost in 11 finals, some of which will undoubtedly nag at him, and that’s not to mention the many other Majors he didn’t win even when he was the dominant force in tennis.

Ronnie O’Sullivan is widely regarded as the greatest snooker player of all time, with a record seven world titles, but over the course of 30 years that means he came away a loser from Sheffield 23 times. As Lancaster pointed out to the Leinster squad after the 2019 defeat in the final by Saracens in Newcastle, the New England Patriots were the dominant force in American football over a period of two decades, during which they won six Super Bowls, but that also meant they were losers in 14 of those years.

Not that any of that would be any consolation should Leinster not beat La Rochelle, merely it just goes with sports’ terrain. Given 24 teams started out in the Champions Cup, 23 fall into the category of “losers”.

Yet as well as winning those first four Champions Cup finals, and a Challenge Cup final, Leinster went 23 games unbeaten deep into April before a C team was walloped by the Stormers. Last Saturday’s loss was only their second in 27 games, and their first meaningful defeat of the season. Yet all of that will be lost in any result-dictated analysis of their season should they not win next Saturday.

Having been rightly praised for his and Leinster’s squad rotation, there will also have been, no doubt, plenty of debate about Leo Cullen’s selection against Munster. This can safely be filed in the category of “Hindsight is 20-20 vision”.

Had they converted the Joe McCarthy try, Munster would have needed more than a three-pointer in that endgame. Even then, four minutes from time, Leinster had the game under control. If they had seen it out, Cullen would have been praised for his keeping his frontliners out of danger. Had he played them and one of them been injured, the debate would have raged as to why Player X was risked.

After all, Ronan O’Gara rested all bar Jonathan Danty and Levani Botia of his probable team, and besides, while the double would have been perfect, given a choice of one trophy, Leinster would take that cherished fifth star every time.

Ultimately, of course, heightening the pressure may not necessarily be a bad thing. If nothing else it will also heighten their desire to atone for their loss to Munster as well as their last two meetings with La Rochelle, and to atone for coming away empty-handed from last season’s run-in.

It should induce a mindset of simply re-enforcing their desire to avenge those defeats by La Rochelle, of stating that the Aviva Stadium is still their patch and inspire outstanding performances from one to 23. In which case, they will most probably win.

Gerry.thornley@irishtimes.com