SHOULD LEINSTER BEAT Toulouse then praise will go to Jacques Nienaber for whatever extent of blitzkrieg he visits on the Toulouse attack. The players too will be complimented handsomely, in particular those who made the telling contributions.
Had Leinster managed to get over the line in the finals of the past two seasons against La Rochelle then Stuart Lancaster would have got plaudits for the attacking verve he instilled in the team.
The actual head coach? Well, we don’t talk about him too much – this year, last year and every year since 2016 when Lancaster was appointed as his senior coach.
Leo Cullen is a background guy. He knows what Lao Tzu knew around two and a half thousand years ago.
“A leader is best when people barely know he exists. When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: ‘we did it ourselves’.”
From modest pronouncements like these, Lao Tzo earned himself a religious following. The same outcome is unlikely for Cullen. He was beaten to the punch by a couple of millennia and he also lacks a certain magnetism; the charisma necessary to earn the devotion of those with whom you have never met.
It’s for similar reasons that he is perhaps the most under-praised man in Irish rugby. Just the way, you would imagine, he likes it.
Egotism is a given in sports management. Even the most selfless exponents need to have an arrogant streak; a will to impose their smarter-than-the-average-bear ideas on a game in the belief that I know best. This kind of instinct seems lacking in Cullen. He is that rare thing – a knower of what he does not know and a promoter of those more capable than himself.
Everybody should have a boss like Leo Cullen at some point of their lives. It is only when they are no longer your boss you appreciate how they trusted you to do the job and supported you by taking care of the myriad stuff that inhibited you from doing your job.
Yet it’s easy to overlook somebody like Cullen in that moment. He might be a son of the Blackrock, but looks like any weather-beaten suburban dad you’d see on a grey Sunday: quietly going to seed and glazed, barely hearing the racket in the backseat as he takes the people carrier for a third lap of the Woodies car park in the forlorn hope of a decent spot. He’s the true hero of our time. Driver of all the motorway miles, payer of all the taxes, sire of all the children; an unkempt, unnoticeable cog in the economy, without which the whole edifice disintegrates.
To look like this while working for Leinster takes self assurance. He’s even managed to stop going to the gym to the point where he doesn’t appear like his 40-something former teammates who have taken their professional conditioning into their 9-5 lives. Middle aged men maintaining pride in their muscle mass is admirable, but there’s plenty to admire about those who are having little of it.
In his thin-limbed, hangdog presentation, Cullen is making a quiet statement. This is not about me, folks. Family, community, sports team – Leo is about what he does for others. Even when he looks daft in the process.
Press conferences for example. Nobody who has ever heard the man speak could believe that Cullen has a talent for this. But by being there he is ensuring that somebody else doesn’t have to. Sometimes it’s not even the delivery of the content which is lacking – what he is saying is plain gibberish.
In advance of the La Rochelle he was ruing the fact that the country wouldn’t row in behind Leinster when they were our only surviving Champions Cup team. There goes a man who has never spent a couple of days in Cork with his eyes and ears open.
After Leinster’s loss to Ulster last weekend he stood up for his players who had gone to the corner at an inopportune time. “Everyone judges on the outcome sometimes.”
Outcome is a big deal in sports at any level – something Cullen well knows, but in his obligation to fill the airspace and do it in the moment he can trip up, which anybody could to be fair.
The winning mentality he has is masked by statements such as the above, but it exists in spades. Cullen left Leinster as a player for Leicester in 2005, and returned in 2007. Those who understand the game far better than me have suggested that Cullen and Shane Jennings coming back in 07 was a game changer for the province.
Leicester was an unsparing environment. Anybody who lasted the course there knew what it was to win games and win trophies. Leinster did not have that killer mentality at the time but Cullen helped to add steel to their composition.
A “hard bastard” is how Donncha O’Callaghan describes him as a player. The judgement was put beyond doubt during a maul in a Munster-Leinster match of their day. In this particular battle for inches, O’Callaghan grabbed his rival by the balls. “He didn’t even flinch,” says O’Callaghan, embarrassed by the incident now. Cullen wasn’t going to be drawn into a dark arts battle, O’Callaghan says. There was a grim relentlessness to go with the fortitude.
Cullen’s toughness is expressed in more prosaic ways now. The 42 did a live podcast in Tullow last year, a hugely enjoyable evening with the people of that club including Sean O’Brien, who gave an idea of what it was like to work on Cullen’s coaching ticket.
“I’ve often tried to beat them into the office – no way would you get in before them,” he said of Cullen and Lancaster.
O’Brien described his routine, leaving Tullow at 4.55am to arrive in Leinster’s UCD training ground for 6am where the pair would always be in situ. Bear in mind training started at 9am.
He decided to push it one morning – get in for 5.30am. “Leo was already in the office.” He would be still around the place 12 hours later, O’Brien said.
Should Leinster lose tomorrow, Cullen will likely take a good proportion of the blame. There will be grumbles, with many saying he has been head coach since 2015 and failed to land the big prize since 2018 despite Leinster having everything going for them.
Yet if Leinster win, who knows? Leo might get some deferred credit. He may even seek to cash in on his glow. Get himself on the Ted Talk circuit with presentations about a distant helicopter style of management, silent pilots and remote control and the like. How I steered my team to success without anybody noticing.
That could happen. Or, there’s a more likely outcome. He could just keep showing up for work at a time when no one is there to see him open the door.
