Leo Cullen periodically scrolls through his phone looking for a photograph to illustrate a point that he’s making at the time. There’s one of his mum, Paula, during her showjumping career, clearing a fence in the RDS arena in 1966. A couple of his son, Con, the first in cahoots with Brian O’Driscoll’s son, Billy, and on another occasion standing alongside Eoin Reddan’s son, Tom, enjoying a milkshake after Railway Union’s win over Cambridge FC.
There is an image, taken from the back of a room, that shows Rabah Slimani in conversation with Alan Spicer as they watch some scrum footage from training, the veteran French international tight head prop, newly arrived from Clermont Auvergne, and the 19-year-old tight head lock. Sitting behind is another secondrow tyro Conor O’Tighearnaigh. Scrum technique 101, master craftsman and apprentices.
The visual references are non sequiturs in terms of conversational touchstones, just markers along the way in a chat that stretches from early to midafternoon in a cafe at the RDS. There is nothing random about the location.
Cullen has a strong affinity with the RDS. It was a playground as a child. He knew every nook and cranny from the days he accompanied his mum to horse shows. Paula bred horses, notably the winner of the 2014 Badminton Horse trials, Paulank Brockagh. Leo occasionally fulfilled the role of groom for his sister, Sarah, at pony shows.
To understand Cullen’s drive and energy, one that can see him head for the office at 6am and return home at 10pm, when family circumstances permit, it’s important to delve into his upbringing in Newtownmountkennedy.
He explains: “I come from a background where my parents work fairly hard at what they do. It instils in you a natural work ethic. You don’t really understand that when you’re younger. You take [it] for granted because you don’t know any different.
“I had an idyllic enough childhood, always working, doing things. I grew up on a farm. We [also] had a butcher shop. There were no complaints, [life was] always full-on, mucking out the stables, getting buckets of feed, all the things with animals and livestock that you needed to do.
Leinster head coach Leo Cullen during last season’s Champions Cup final between Leinster and Toulouse. Photograph: Billy Stickland/Inpho
“I probably hung outside a stable as a baby, watched someone else mucking out until I was old enough to hold a pitchfork. My mum’s ‘child labour camp’ is what we used to call it,” he says with a smile. “We were very lucky.” He enjoyed time spent with his father – Frank set up Cullen Communications, which his other son, Owen, now runs – on the morning and evening car commute, aged eight to 18, to and from Williamstown.
There are serendipitous elements to his playing career. As a fifth year, he got his then-favourite player – Leicester Tigers’ Dean Richards, who was training with the Barbarians team in Blackrock – to sign an England School’s international jersey, which he had swapped when playing for Ireland.
Richards was the Harlequins coach in the infamous ‘Bloodgate’, a quarter-final match Leinster won en route to a first Heineken Cup title in 2009, the first of three outright victories in four years, all captained by Cullen.
In 1995 he was on Blackrock’s Schools Cup winning team that beat Newbridge College in the final. Two of his opponents – Geordan Murphy and Jim Ferris – signed for Leicester Tigers. Cullen had a chance to make the same journey in 1997. Eight years later he did. He recalled: “There were lots of these weird factors pulling me towards going there [to Leicester]. There weren’t as many that anchored me here [to Leinster].”
The Irish province was in a state of flux. Cullen says that in the early years of the professional era, “I’m not sure that the public really wanted to associate with Leinster in a positive way. That was everyone’s responsibility. I am not pointing the finger at anyone; I’d point it at myself as well.
“There are lots of parts of Leinster that the nation wouldn’t be that fond of. And sometimes people like to poke fun at that. There was a particular period where we experienced that to a strong extent and there were lots of labels and tags put on that.”
Leinster head coach Leo Cullen. ‘It’s important that we try to make the people proud of our work.’ Photograph: Ryan Byrne/Inpho
Success allowed Leinster to shed the skin as flaky underachievers but no trophies in the last three seasons and no European crown since 2018, including three successive defeats in finals, have emboldened the critics and naysayers once again. Even within Leinster’s 12-county cohort there is an occasional rumble of discontent, amplified by the continued absence of silverware.
Cullen is a defender of the realm, a passionate advocate for what Leinster stands for in a rugby context. “What motivates me more is to make everyone [who is a Leinster supporter] really proud to identify with the team by seeing characteristics that they respect and like.
“What worries me? I am worried about the people that we want to represent. It’s important that we try to make the people proud of our work, that [we have] pride in the work that we deliver. We work hard to make sure players that come into the system, we set them up to succeed so they go on to be internationals.
“We want them to feel very connected to the club and Leinster. Players move on at different stages, but people want to stay, you can see that, it’s very important.”
As he finishes speaking, he turns his head towards the old Anglesea Stand, soon to be demolished. It is at this moment he produces the photograph of his mum. The backdrop to the action shot is the Anglesea Stand, identical to its current iteration 58 years on. The original photo hangs in the hall of the Cullen family home. “I have a strong connection to this place [despite the fact that] I went to shows with my mum without any real interest in horses.
“It’s an amazing stadium, venue and it will be great [when] modernised. You look at the paddocks and there is space there for kids. I have listened to some of our players talk about their journey into Leinster. Some have been mascots; some have come to games with family. They would go to their seats for 30 seconds and [then] ask mum or dad [to let them] go down and play at the back of the stand.
“When I look out at the paddocks they [inspire] the memories I have of our current group of players. There is magic in that. You have kids that come to the games, whose families are season ticket holders, that go on to be Leinster players 10 or 12 years later.”
He then picks up his phone for a second time, pulls up the photograph of Con Cullen and Billy O’Driscoll, contemporaries in age with their impish grins, their fathers, Leo and Brian, friends and former team-mates who wound down their Leinster careers on the same afternoon in the RDS, in May 2014.
It was a bittersweet occasion, Leinster beat the Glasgow Warriors in the Pro12 final, but O’Driscoll’s race was run inside the first 10 minutes due to a calf injury. Cullen, who started on the bench, recalls Ian Madigan’s words as he prepared to replace O’Driscoll, “wait until you hear the roar when I come on”. Even now it raises a laugh.
Leo Cullen and Brian O’Driscoll after their last match for Leinster in May 2014. Photograph: Patrick Bolger/Getty Images
At various points, the conversation returned to Leinster’s identity. Who are they? Who do they want to be? Who do they represent? The timbre of his voice rises slightly, his passion for the topic bubbling to the surface.
Cullen asserts that a key component in Leinster’s evolution must be continued diversification, that while acknowledging how the province benefited hugely from the work of the schools in the talent production pathway, it should be remembered that the clubs also played a vital role.
He uses Tadhg Furlong and Jamie Osborne as examples of an alternative route map into professional rugby that not only inspires the young boys and girls of New Ross and Naas but also wins hearts and minds in towns and villages.
Leinster are the recipients of covetous glances inside and outside of Ireland for what some perceive to be an endless bankroll. Cullen rejects the notion. “I was talking to a person from one of the English teams that went under. I think there is a perception out there that Leinster have some benefactors. That’s bizarre and not the case. We have to lead a sustainable model.
“We have to be prudent from a financial point of view and operate under a strict budget. People don’t seem to think that is a factor. The provinces need to fund the domestic game; the more you invest there, the greater the yield.”
The IRFU’s recent changes to central contact funding will remove a little of the friction with the other provincial constituents but by no means all. Cullen says: “I know that the other three provinces don’t like Leinster for lots of other reasons and that’s their prerogative.
“I know that for a fact, I have heard people talking about us. You want them to give us grudging respect because I respect competition, I respect rivalries and it’s a great thing to have.”
Cullen points out that Leinster will have “65 players in the building” including 22 in the academy and 43 senior players, three of whom are non-Irish qualified – Rabah Slimani, RG Snyman and Jordie Barrett, who will arrive in December.
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He understands “the frustration” of supporters who would like Leinster to be more proactive in high-profile foreign player recruitment but that there are constraints. “The market for top-end marquee players is insanely expensive. If you go back to the two World Cup final teams, look at where the players are playing their rugby.
Leo Cullen celebrates at the final whistle in the 2009 Heineken Cup final between Leinster and Leicester. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images
“There is a big percentage, over half, playing in Japan. Why are they in Japan? Pure monetary reasons, that’s an economic reality. We are not really in the market for the top-end marquee players.” Let those words settle. So, Leinster, while far from poor, aren’t the alpha rich that they are portrayed to be.
Snyman wanted to stay in Ireland. Leinster were in the market for a secondrow and were delighted to accommodate his wishes. The photograph of Slimani with the two young locks offers an insight into the ancillary impact that the Frenchman will have outside his qualities as a player. Barrett is an anomaly to the province’s normal style of business.
Cullen says: “You want to have that star quality that people are happy to pitch up and pay money to go to see. Which is unusual in terms of what we have done in more recent times.
“The people that turn up week to week, there is a real pride, identity with all the multifaceted background of the players and then you bring in three non-Irish players as an example this season. You want them to understand that.
“People have to be able to bring in their real true strengths, what’s real about themselves to the party, whether that’s a player or coach, any member of the backroom team. You want to have great people, not a load of arseholes in the building. There is an internal pressure that I live and die by. The external pressure is not something that I [pay much heed to].”
His style of coaching is one of enabling through preparation and then providing a certain autonomy to his fellow coaches and, more importantly, to the players. As a former captain he understands that a coach needs to declutter when sending on messages and must choose the messenger carefully.
He offered a non-specific example. “I have been in that situation where I have been a water boy listening to a message from coaches and thinking there is no way I am sending that message to the player.”
Coaches control preparation, players to a large degree dictate what happens on the pitch, which requires an element of flexibility to accommodate a shifting in-game landscape. Cullen admits: “Ultimately, it’s a players’ game. They have to make decisions. Players need to step up and deliver on the big days.”
He argues that it is that preparation process that dictates who plays – “coaches just fill in the team sheet”. The outhalf conundrum is the single biggest external debating point since Jonny Sexton’s retirement. And it will continue to be until Leinster win silverware again.
Family time spent with his wife Dairine, son Con and daughter Aya offers a richly rewarding counterbalance to his professional life. There is no downside to milkshakes from Scoop after a Sandymount Classico.
Leo Cullen and Jacques Nienaber at a Leinster training session in UCD. Photograph: Tom Maher/Inpho
When asked whether he’d like a “Guy Noves longevity” to his coaching tenure, he pauses, and a flicker of a smile appears. Not taking the bait doesn’t let you off the hook. He’s heard the whispering, understands the frustration and disappointment of the last three years but he is not cowed or damaged by the near misses.
“I am happy to keep the conversation open. At some point the players will say: ‘we’d like to hear from someone else’. I want to make sure that they are continuously stimulated in a good way.”
He has honoured that commitment in the coaches he has attracted, from the moment he brought in New Zealand World Cup-winning coach Graham Henry on a consultancy basis to Stuart Lancaster, Felipe Contepomi, Robin McBryde, Denis Leamy, Sean O’Brien, Jacques Nienaber, Andrew Goodman and, this season, Tyler Bleyendaal, to highlight a few.
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Cullen has never stopped trying, never stood still, always looked to facilitate the evolution and development of his beloved Leinster. You can see it in the throughput of players to Ireland, the search for new domestic and overseas talent and in seeking coaches that can add value to the project. That diligence is obvious.
He will hope that John Quincy Adams was right when he suggested that “patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish”. It’d be helpful and opportune if that happened this season. Time without success is finite in professional sport.
As he stands to go, he says: “We have what we have so we just need to make sure that we are as good as we possibly can be.”
A neverending quest.
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