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SportRugby UnionFootballCricketRugby UnionFantasy FootballFootball FixturesFootball TablesFootball ResultsStuart Lancaster eyes ‘Klopp-like’ stay with Leinster on cusp of Champions Cup glory

Leinster have improved since losing to La Rochelle in the semi-finals last year, with Stuart Lancaster widely acknowledged as the driver of the team’s development

By Hugh GodwinRugby Union CorrespondentMay 28, 2022 9:34 am(Updated May 19, 2023 4:51 pm)

Leinster have reached such a finely-tuned pitch of fast-paced cohesion and belligerence that it would be a long-odds upset if La Rochelle turned them over in Saturday’s European Champions Cup final in Marseille, and denied the Irish province a record-equalling fifth title in the competition.

It is only just over 12 months since La Rochelle beat Leinster 32-23 in last season’s semi-finals, before the French side lost to fifth-time winner Toulouse in the Twickenham final.

But Leinster have upped their performance in the meantime, and they will have Jamison Gibson-Park and Johnny Sexton at half-back, not the Luke McGrath-Ross Byrne combo of 12 months ago.

Sexton, at 36, is in the kind of form to frustrate the ambitions of Ronan O’Gara, his old Munster foe and Ireland fly-half rival who is now head coach of La Rochelle and aiming to emulate Leinster’s Leo Cullen and Ugo Mola of Toulouse as a Champions Cup final winner as player and coach.

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“I certainly understand the mindset of Johnny, that he’s a competitor, [and] that’s the understatement of the season,” O’Gara said this week.

“I think he’s also been fuelled… there wasn’t much of a deal made of the fact he didn’t make the Lions tour [last year], but that would have hurt him deeply. He’s made changes to his game.

“He’s a very good passer of the ball but he’s also becoming a threat again, which he may have put on the back burner for a number of months but you saw in the Toulouse [semi-final] game, it was a running game, a kicking game, a passing game and he’s very good at seeing the opportunity before other people see it.”

How to watch Champions Cup final 2022

• Date: Saturday 28 May
• Venue: Stade Velodrome, Marseille
• Time: 4.45pm BST
• TV/Live stream: Free-to-air on Channel 4 and stream on Channel 4’s website/app. Also on BT Sport 2 and the BT Sport website/app

An English team of match officials led by the whistling barrister, Wayne Barnes, merely emphasises the singular role of Stuart Lancaster, ostensibly the number two to Leinster’s boss Cullen, but widely acknowledged as the driver of the team’s development since he arrived in 2016, a few months after his home World Cup as England’s head coach ended in the calamity of a pool-stage exit, and the sack.

Lancaster’s development in turn is topical as his England successor Eddie Jones’s time will end with next year’s World Cup. In the space of a few days recently, Lancaster, Andy Farrell and Shaun Edwards were all seen at Premiership club matches, so if the Rugby Football Union wanted to tap any of them up in person, they had the opportunity.

Lancaster was pressed on his Leinster contract in a BBC Radio 4 interview on Friday morning, and he said with a hint of discomfort: “It does run out [in June 2023]. It could easily be renewed!” And he added: “Obviously you have got regrets that you didn’t get a chance to finish the [England] project you were involved in. But can I turn back the clock and change that? No, I can’t. I am very much forward-looking.

“If Jurgen Klopp can stay at Liverpool for 10 or 11 years, then perhaps I can stay at Leinster for 10, 11 years. Club coaching, for me, takes some beating. That’s the priority for me at the moment.”

And yet the measured tones of the man who has been commuting between his family home in Leeds and Dublin still revealed a nagging regret with his country.

“We set our stall out to develop a young group of players who would develop experience from 2012 through to, ideally, 2019 and beyond,” Lancaster told the “Today” programme. “So I think the foundations we put in place for Eddie Jones to move on to has benefited England. The relationship I had within the Union, with the people, I made some great friends and had some amazing experiences. The [2015] World Cup, the one game [against Wales] didn’t really play out and obviously that changed everything for me.”

Leinster are unchanged from the semi-final win over Toulouse a fortnight ago, with prop Tadhg Furlong and James Lowe shaking off ankle and shin niggles respectively. La Rochelle’s team news was a mix of good and distressing: the former Saracens lock Will Skelton is fit, with France full-back Brice Dulin also returning, but the uber-experienced imports Victor Vito and Tawera Kerr-Barlow have not made it.

La Rochelle have sold out their Marcel Deflandre Stadium for the last 67 domestic league matches; now they have made the 700-kilometre trip south in search of an inaugural Champions Cup crown, with their flanker-centre genius Levani Botia on the bench and many of Ireland’s finest and canniest ranged in front of them.

Lancaster cautiously adapted the old Mike Tyson line about opponents’ best-laid plans disintegrating as soon as they get punched in the mouth, saying: “We’ve won in France and lost in France [but] nothing prepares you really until you walk out in front of 60,000 people in 28 degrees heat and suddenly you have massive bodies whacking into you.”

Topics

• Champions Cup
• European Champions Cup
• Leinster Rugby
• Stade La Rochelle

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