{"id":731706,"date":"2026-06-12T11:12:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T11:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/731706\/"},"modified":"2026-06-12T11:12:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T11:12:11","slug":"matt-williams-mindless-hatred-of-leinster-will-hurt-irish-rugby-in-the-long-run-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/731706\/","title":{"rendered":"Matt Williams: Mindless hatred of Leinster will hurt Irish rugby in the long run \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The lack of praise from the Irish rugby media towards Leinster<\/a> since they reached the United Rugby Championship (URC) final has been deafening. Despite being under constant media attack since losing the Champions Cup final, the Leinster coaches have guided their team to a gutsy win over the Stormers<\/a> and into a home URC decider. While it wasn\u2019t pretty, they won.<\/p>\n

Their second consecutive URC<\/a> final will also be Leinster\u2019s seventh knockout match of the season \u2013 and their fourth in a row. Numbers that no other team in Europe can match.<\/p>\n

Even more amazingly, the haters \u2013 and there are plenty of them \u2013 will be backing the South African Bulls in next Friday\u2019s final. Defeat for Leo Cullen\u2019s men would give these people all the ammunition required to administer a good old kicking.<\/p>\n

What a ridiculous state of affairs. <\/p>\n

This week, I explained Leinster\u2019s situation to a former Australian international test cricketer and coach. He has two decades of experience in elite sport.<\/p>\n

\u201cLeinster won the URC last year?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

Yes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey made another Champions Cup final this year?\u201d<\/p>\n

Yes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have reached another URC final?\u201d<\/p>\n

Yes.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd the coach and the team are mostly local boys?\u201d <\/p>\n

Yes.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd they want to sack the coach and are suggesting the team are failures?\u201d<\/p>\n

Yes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s just nuts.\u201d<\/p>\n

What else could I say but answer every question in the affirmative? <\/p>\n

If you cast your mind back to last October, when Munster defeated Leinster at Croke Park, the ignorant began yelling they were finished and Munster were now the ascendant Irish province. Leinster needs new management was the cry. Fast forward eight months and they have reached both the Champions Cup and URC finals, while Munster are in an administrative, financial and performance crisis. <\/p>\n

\"Leinster'sLeinster’s Rieko Ioane is tackled by Leolin Zas of Stormers during Leinster’s hard-fought URC semi-final win last Saturday at the Aviva Stadium. Photograph: Ben Brady\/Inpho <\/p>\n

The URC semi-final against Stormers was a window into Leinster\u2019s season. They have not been brilliant in 2025-26, but they have been exceptionally gritty. They are a team that is tired, physically beaten up and riddled with injuries, but they continue to find ways to win. After supplying more players to the Lions than any other club, reaching both finals is a massive achievement that would be lauded in other countries.<\/p>\n

But in Ireland, they still want to sack the coaches and kick the club. <\/p>\n

The two-week break between the URC semi-finals and final is exactly what Leinster needed. In gaining a home final 13 days after their victory against Stormers, the Leinster players have bought themselves a much-needed window to recover and be ready for a solid week of preparation. It will, undoubtedly, be a brutally physical match.<\/p>\n

Their opponents, the Bulls, made their way to the final by beating Glasgow. They then made the strange decision to fly back to South Africa for a week, before jetting north again a few days later. Multiple long-haul flights in the 10 days before a final hardly seems like ideal preparation. <\/p>\n

As the build-up for the match gathered some momentum, Irish rugby was stopped in its tracks by some very sad news. Many heartfelt tributes have been paid to former IRFU CEO Philip Browne since he passed away<\/a> on Monday. <\/p>\n

When I coached Leinster and Ulster, I had many dealings with Philip. He was a straight shooter, a gentleman and a sincerely honest person. He was the administrative bridge that ferried a recalcitrant IRFU from the amateur era to a new age of professionalism. Philip had to traverse a long and rocky road but in the following years, he oversaw a meteoric rise in Irish rugby.<\/p>\n

The wisdom of Philip and his fellow administrators, such as then-Leinster chairman John Hussey and former Munster CEO Garrett Fitzgerald \u2013 who supported the establishment of the Celtic League competition \u2013 is perhaps the greatest example of his generation\u2019s administrative excellence. <\/p>\n

\"FormerFormer IRFU CEO Philip Browne, who passed away on Monday. Photograph: Dan Sheridan\/Inpho <\/p>\n

Since the Celtic League\u2019s inception in 2001, the benefits of the now-URC to Irish rugby can be measured by the stunning fact that Irish teams have won the competition 15 times.<\/p>\n

The rise of Leinster as a global powerhouse has been built on their domination of the competition \u2013 they have lifted the trophy nine times.<\/p>\n

In the adrenaline-filled environment of playoff rugby, organisational governance provided by leaders like Philip Browne is a very unsexy topic. Yet at every organisation I have worked in, those with competent governance succeeded while those with flawed governance failed. In my experience, it has been that black and white. The foundation of all sporting success begins in the boardroom.<\/p>\n

Every winning rugby organisation has an essential connection between their key leaders. The chairman, board members, the CEO, the head coach, the team captain and their senior players are all aligned to the same goals and to the process of how those goals will be achieved. Attaining that alignment requires strong communication and powerful relationships right through that leadership chain. <\/p>\n

For most of the last 2\u00bd decades, Leinster have harnessed the power of that alignment. That is why the Leinster players can get their hearts broken in a losing Champions Cup final and then come out in the next two weeks and reach another URC final. <\/p>\n

\"Leinster'sLeinster’s Jamison Gibson-Park celebrates scoring a try with teammates Jack Conan and Gus McCarthy during last Saturday’s URC semi-final win against Stormers at the Aviva Stadium, Dublin. Photograph: Ben Brady\/Inpho <\/p>\n

Munster are failing because they lack that alignment. If Munster do not get an independent and brutally honest evaluation of their internal governance, nothing will change and the Red Army can expect more of the same.<\/p>\n

Over the past two weeks, I have heard some desperately ill-informed commentary regarding Leinster. Currently, there is an echo chamber of negativity that is wrongly portraying the club as failures, despite the fact they have won five URC titles in eight years and are now in another final. <\/p>\n

Instead of praising such excellence, many across Irish rugby will be hoping that the Bulls can win so they can justify their clawing of an Irish team that is equal to the best in the world.<\/p>\n

The truly sad part of this story is that instead of insisting the other provinces get their act together and begin to play superior rugby that would empower them to rise above Leinster, the mob simply wants to drag the D4 team down. That will damage the standards of all Irish rugby and condemn the national team to mediocrity.<\/p>\n

My cricketing mate is right. That\u2019s just nuts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The lack of praise from the Irish rugby media towards Leinster since they reached the United Rugby Championship…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":731707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,176955,760,85,134441],"class_list":["post-731706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-leinster-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-united-rugby-championship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=731706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/731707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=731706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=731706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=731706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}