Given Bath’s travails at the bottom of the English Premiership this season, there were more than a few eyebrows raised earlier in the campaign when it was confirmed that Munster’s head coach Johann van Graan would be swapping Thomond Park for the Rec next year.
ven for all their rich history, quite what the appeal of taking over a club in such seemingly poor health was something of a mystery.
Saturday night in the Aviva Stadium offered a reminder of at least one benefit — the South African will be getting far, far away from Leinster.
“Every team in Europe and South Africa are trying to figure out how you beat them,” he said after watching his side drop a game that they needed to win and Leinster could afford to lose.
What made it all the more frustrating for those in red was that, with this weekend’s Champions Cup final against La Rochelle to come, this was a much-changed Leinster side, one that will have little resemblance to the one trying to win a record-equalling fifth European crown in Marseilles, and yet still had plenty in the tank for yet another win over their heated rivals.
But while Van Graan, as well as his predecessors and their counterparts in Belfast, have had to get used to having their successes and failures scrutinised in relation to the steady stream of silverware being collected down the road over the past decade, increasingly it seems clubs the world over are coming to view not just Leinster, but the Leinster model, as the ideal blueprint.
“I wasn’t talking tongue-in-cheek when I said I admired the way they played and I am even more,” said Ugo Mola after seeing his Toulouse side beaten in Dublin two weekends back in what will have to go down as one of the truly great European displays from any side in the near three-decade long history of the competition.
“There were too many things between us. We were unable to stem the blue waves. We came across a much better team than us. We have taken a real rugby lesson; at the moment, they are much better than us, it is obvious. As always, lessons must be learned.
Consider that such talk of a “real rugby lesson” was coming from the coach of a side who only last year won a Champions Cup and Top 14 double. A side who, led by the talismanic Antoine Dupont, have earned rave reviews for their attacking style and verve. And a side, most crucially of all, who have always had a keen sense of history and of their place in it.
To hear Mola speak in almost reverential terms of his victorious opposition gives an insight into just how special a performance Leo Cullen’s side produced in the semi-final against a side who had already knocked out both Ulster and Munster.
It truly was rugby of another level, the pace and precision simply too much for any opposition to deal with. Having previously been accused of lacking something in power terms after defeats to Saracens and La Rochelle in recent seasons, the sharpening of the attack through this season has been a sight to behold.
While each of Europe’s three leagues are very different beasts, Leinster’s dominance domestically is something of an anomaly in professional terms, more akin to what we see in some top football leagues rather than anything in rugby.
Wasps of 2003-05 were the last side to win three titles in a row in England, while the previous 10 editions of the Top 14 have seen six different clubs crowned champions.
Indeed, in its differing guises the URC was similarly unpredictable only a handful of years ago, with both Glasgow and Connacht crowned first-time winners in 2015 and ‘16 then Scarlets getting their hands on the trophy for only a second time in ‘17.
Since then, though, the boys in blue have swept aside all comers and will expect next month to make it an unprecedented five titles in a row. It is worth noting that no other side in the competition’s history has won five titles in total, let alone consecutively.
There are, of course, some who are turned off by such uninterrupted success. If the beauty of sport is in its range of possibilities, then to see what has at times felt like a foregone conclusion come the end of a season could be viewed as damaging to the product.
Instead, the presence of one of the sport’s true shining lights should be viewed as a selling point. Not only in terms of the rugby they’re playing but the environment and culture of success that they have created.
While naturally there are inherent advantages in their location, not to mention the central contract system which sees many of their biggest earners paid by the IRFU, what appears to be driving the Leinster machine forward is something more intangible.
Indeed, such is the reputation of the side’s cracking of the codes of high performance that La Rochelle’s Victor Vito has admitted to seeking out Stuart Lancaster to pick his brain about replicating some of the off field methods out in France.
“The way they really work on their identity, I spoke to Stuart Lancaster over Covid because we never dreamed we would be seeing each other in rugby and he talked to me about creating an identity, creating a solid group and how you can pull things together on and off the field,” said the former All Black flanker.
“And obviously I took little titbits that I thought could help improve our environment.”
There will be cynics out there who note that, more often than not, it is having better rugby players than the opposition that will win you games but there must be something in the Leinster approach.
How else could you explain the improvement in already established players after some time spent in the D4 bubble?
When Leinster were last at this stage, Jamison Gibson Park was named only on the bench behind Luke McGrath. Four years on, the native Kiwi isn’t just ahead of McGrath at club level but Conor Murray internationally.
James Lowe is another who is just getting better and better, while to see the unheralded Ross Molony making such an impact against Toulouse told a story too.
It says much that already there can be detected a sense that this group should have a European title to their name, that having not won the club game’s biggest prize since 2018 is a wrong that must be righted.
Those in the RDS will know that they have won nothing yet, however, and the tag of favourites on Saturday will count for nothing if they don’t go out and get the job done.
They will be expecting to see that fifth star secured. On and off the pitch, this is an organisation that has felt five-star for quite some time already.
