One of the things I loved most as a player was being challenged to improve. Eddie O’Sullivan demanded consistency; Michael Cheika at Leinster pushed the mental edge: be tougher, be present, be accountable.
Joe Schmidt was no different, but the manner of his challenge to us as players left a deeper imprint on Irish rugby – both with Leinster and Ireland – than anyone could have predicted. Cheika had rewired Leinster’s mentality. Schmidt focused on the style and substance of how we went about winning, a subtle shift at first but unmistakable.
He embedded the phrase “attention to detail” into the Irish rugby psyche and he did it without ever needing to raise his voice. Everything began and ended with winning the small moments, technical and the tactical: the passing, the running lines, the decision-making under fatigue and the clear-eyed option-taking, whether on phase four or 14.
We’d come through a relatively successful period with Leinster, winning the 2009 Heineken Cup and enjoyed a strong follow-up year. We weren’t coasting, but we thought we had the formula. Joe showed us we had merely scratched the surface. On the field, he changed very little at first. Off the field was where the subtle priming started.
Punctuality was non-negotiable. Being late wasn’t an inconvenience, it was a breach of trust. Traffic wasn’t an excuse. You simply hadn’t left early enough. Everything within your control became part of the culture. Did you bring the correct gear? Did you clean up after yourself? Was your body composition where it needed to be? All those small habits, the ones easy to ignore, became a currency of conduct and attitude.
One day, after repeated infringements, a player finally asked Joe why he was so relentless about the basics. His response was simple: if he couldn’t trust players to make the small, easy decisions every day, how could he trust them to make the big ones when it really mattered? That line has stayed with me ever since.
So, when he announced out of nowhere that he wanted us to become the best passing team in Europe, none of us blinked. He committed to memory every catch, every pass and every transfer under pressure. Good passages were celebrated. Work-ons were delivered without sugar coating.
And slowly, almost without realising it, our standards in passing became a badge of honour. We weren’t just a good passing side, we were the passing side - or at least we believed we were. It fed the culture and made the place a brilliant, if occasionally stressful, environment in which to play.
Munster fall as Leinster fail to impress in Europe
Winning isn’t easy. Anyone who claims otherwise hasn’t been inside a successful team. They’ve only ever watched from the safe side of the fence. Winning is all-consuming. Yet there’s a balance to be negotiated on the field between structure and freedom, and off it between identity and conformity.
Felipe Contepomi embodied that balance better than anyone I played with. Fiercely loyal, he was a leader with a brilliant rugby mind. He could see things a split second before others and when someone didn’t read the picture he saw, he let them know with brutal honesty. “Mate, if you can’t see this, why are you here?”
It wasn’t to belittle anyone; he reminded us that even the best players look ordinary when they stop reading the cues in front of them. That ability, to blend systems with instinct, is what separates the top European sides.
For me, the French clubs are leading that conversation. Watch Toulouse or Bordeaux and the contrast with most Anglo-Saxon sides is stark. Their play looks improvised but it isn’t. It is a structure laced with imagination. Matthieu Jalibert, Thomas Ramos, Ange Capuozzo – they’re wonderful talents, but the collective understanding within their teams is what frees them.
Capuozzo’s second try last weekend was rugby poetry, running lines in harmony, quick ruck ball, multiple threats, and the right decision at exactly the right moment. What struck me most was how easily French sides cut teams apart with simple, well-timed passes. Nothing fancy, just execution at pace.
Compare that to the pressure Munster were under from the first minute in Bath, or how Leinster struggled at times to break down Harlequins’ defensive shape. Leinster weren’t poor; they were predictable.
When ’Quins adjusted the breakdown pressure, sometimes flooding it, sometimes ignoring it entirely, Leinster lost rhythm because the system alone didn’t provide the solution and there weren’t enough individuals willing to break free from the patterns and change the flow of the match on their own terms.
This Leinster squad isn’t lacking quality, but their reliance on the same sources of creativity suggests the balance in the group isn’t quite right. They played within themselves for much of the win over Harlequins, enjoying home comforts.
Leicester Tigers will provide a more formidable challenge, the full extent of which will be revealed in Thursday’s team sheet. It’s a contest between two teams that rely heavily on pragmatism. The Tigers will send Freddie Steward into the air in their kick/chase and have a touch more pace out wide. What I’d like to see from Leinster is an emphasis on simple skill execution becoming their point of difference again.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about Stu McCloskey grabbing his moment. The same is true of Tom Farrell and Tommy O’Brien. Really, it shouldn’t matter what the system or structure is, it’s about having the vision and confidence to go after even the smallest of gaps. An offload, a step, a cutback: those are the moments that change everything.
The best teams always had someone who drove the environment relentlessly. Johnny Sexton, Paul O’Connell, Johnny Muldoon and Stephen Ferris, to take a provincial view, are players who delivered themselves and then demanded more from everyone else. They enforced a strong culture, said uncomfortable things.
Systems have a place but within those parameters there is scope for the individual to shine, to change the course of a match. To do that requires confidence, courage and the skill set to seize the moment. Great players step up.
