In the last two games of Leinster's BKT United Rugby Championship title success, there’s been a temperature change.
Leo Cullen’s side played with a hard-nosed belligerence in their semi-final win against Glasgow, and that meanness was ramped up further in Saturday’s emphatic grand final win against the Bulls.
One of the great weekly press conference cliches is that teams don't listen to what they call the "outside noise", and focus only on themselves. These last few weeks have been decent proof that the outside noise is there to be heard.
After the semi-final victory against Glasgow, Joe McCarthy and Jack Conan’s comments made it clear this Leinster group had started to use the criticism of their recent performances as fuel.
If this is how they play when they feel slighted, maybe they should lean into it more often. If McCarthy’s words are true, and so many people hate his team, why not embrace being the villain?
"Keep the abuse coming, we don't mind. Thick skins," Leo Cullen (below) said at Croke Park on Saturday evening, after the 32-7 win against the Bulls.
Having suffered three final defeats and four semi-final defeats since their last trophy in 2021, Saturday’s final against the Bulls was billed as one Leinster simply could not afford to lose, given their abundance of Irish international talent, not to mention their trio of world class foreign imports.
And although the squad had looked weighed down by the pressure to deliver in the weeks following their Champions Cup semi-final loss to Northampton, they looked a team reborn in their final two outings.
"The guys are delighted there in the dressing room. It's just enjoying the occasion now. I’m talking to some of the Bulls guys there at the end and they just watched the trophy lift, that's what I tried to get across yesterday [about the feeling of losing].
"They are the two best teams in the competition, we’ve lost in different ways, at the death, after extra time, you’ve just got to keep putting ourselves in that position and keep pushing the boundaries of what we do, you get criticism when you lose, it still doesn’t take away what - personally speaking - I love doing.
"Pressure is great, it's part and parcel of sport. It's a great way to feel alive, we're lucky to be involved in it."
On Saturday, they bullied the South Africans in multiple ways across the 80 minutes. The opening quarter was played at a frenzied pace which the Bulls couldn’t sustain, and Jake White’s side could hardly touch the ball. By the 27th minute Leinster had scored 19 points, and the Bulls had registered just 13 carries.
After dominating them with the ball in that first 27 minutes, they then spent the next 13 dominating them without it.
The Bulls launched two big attacks on the Leinster 22 before half time, the first ending with a limp crossfield kick from Willie le Roux falling into the hands of Sam Prendergast, and the second finished with a forward pass – again by Le Roux – after the Bulls had gone backwards 15 metres over the length of 15 phases.
As clinical as the three tries in the opening quarter were, those defensive stands epitomised everything that was good about Leinster on Saturday, and Jack Conan says that energy and aggression was inspired by the words of their opposition head coach, Jake White.
"They came out with a lot of stuff in the media during the week about 'it’s Ireland versus the Bulls’," the Leinster captain said.
"So we said, ‘Right, let’s not disappoint them, let’s be at our best, let’s give them Irish rugby’ and I thought we did that.
"It was incredibly tough, I was wrecked running in at half time.
"The lads were unbelievable physically, lads shooting out of the line, whacking people. We spoke about wanting to make every tackle with a bit of intent, every set piece to lay down a marker and I thought the lads did that in spades.
"If they got in there [for a try], it’s probably a different game and then you come out in the second half and you’re under a little bit of pressure, so the lads were brilliant.
"You’ve got to love that, you’ve got to love those physical moments, the lift that it gives you, and says so much about where we are mentally, you know.
"It was brilliant, it was a huge lift, it was nice to get 15 minutes at half time so you could properly recuperate because lads were fairly shagged after that."
As has been the tradition for Leinster, Conan was joined for the trophy lift by one of the departing crew of players, with Cian Healy dragged up to share the honours in his final act as a Leinster player.
The loosehead, who has now won 18 trophies in his 18-year career for Leinster and Ireland, will retire after next week’s Barbarians v South Africa clash at Twickenham, and Conan says it meant a lot to share that moment with him.
"For Cian, who is probably Leinster’s greatest ever servant, for everything he’s done.
"He would hate that, I said it to him before: ‘I want you to do this, I know you will say no, but please come up and lift the trophy’.
"It’s only fitting that someone like that, who has given their all and has done incredibly well over the years, gets his final moment with the trophy.
"I’m glad he said yes because I really thought he would fight me on it. He’s not one for the limelight, he doesn't want the attention.
"I’m delighted he came up with myself and Caelan [Doris] and lifted the trophy because it’s the least he deserves."
