MORE SO THAN most of his international team-mates, Leo Cullen knows what it feels like to pick up the phone on squad announcement day and hear the words “I’m sorry.”
Since being handed his senior Irish debut by Eddie O’Sullivan in 2002, the Leinster captain has gone on to make 29 international appearances over the past nine seasons, remaining a familiar face in the national set-up after Declan Kidney assumed the role four years ago.
In 2003 and again in 2007, Cullen was very much in contention for Ireland’s World Cup panel, only to be cruelly omitted as O’Sullivan made his final heartbreaking cuts. At the tender age of 33, the second row knows that it is now or never if he is going to convince the new man in charge to buck that trend.
“It would mean the world to me [to make the squad],” Cullen said at yesterday’s Leinster jersey launch. “It’d be great for me personally, I’d love it.”
Of the two World Cups which he has narrowly missed out on, the Wicklow native has no difficulty in identifying which was the more bitter disappointment. The idea that he might not be travelling to Australia in the autumn of 2003 wasn’t even on his radar and the news, when it arrived, completely blindsided him.
“Eight years ago, I got the call the morning the squad was being announced. I was totally shocked, I didn’t think it was coming.”
I was all planned to go out there, to tell you the truth. It was a real disappointment.
When the time came for O’Sullivan to assemble his panel for the 2007 tournament in France, Cullen was plying his trade with the Leicester Tigers and was, in his own words, “a little bit out of the loop.” As the squad was whittled down and he remained in contention, however, the anticipation of a possible World Cup debut began to build and build before it was finally whisked away.
“Four years ago, I was in a situation where I was coming back from England. I was a little bit out of the loop and hadn’t really been involved,” Cullen said.
“Even though I was there until the final culling, I was expecting to get the call. I was massively disappointed and yeah, it was pretty tough.”
When you’re ambitious as a rugby player, it’s pretty tough sitting at home watching the games. There were real mixed emotions to tell you the truth.
Mindful that this will be his last chance to represent his country on the biggest stage, Cullen decided to undergo surgery on a shoulder problem last summer so that he would be in peak contention when the World Cup warm-up games roll around.
“It was part of the plan to get into the best possible shape for this year. Thankfully, I’m still on course. I seem to have navigated my way through and I’ll try and get a bit of form going into these August games.”
Those four warm-up matches next month – starting with the game against Scotland on 6 August – will be pivotal, both for Cullen and for the team as a whole. But, with the disappointment of past campaigns still resonating, the Leinster man is being careful not to get ahead of himself with lofty predictions and expectations.
“I think it’s a distraction to look at that end goal,” he warns. “I think we need to look at the process in front of us. I think in the past the team has looked too far down the road.
“[The warm-up campaign] is about preparing as best we can, getting ourselves in the best possible shape and then navigating our way through the pool.”
