Jacques Nienaber anticipated the line of inquiry and cut it off with a smile and a few carefully chosen words. No gain, no traction, as befits a brilliant defence coach. Instead, there was Just a diplomatic response to whether he will contend for the head coaching role that Leo Cullen vacates at the end of the season.
Spoiler alert. He didn’t say yes and he didn’t say no. Here’s what he did say: “It’s a process that Leinster is busy with and I’m sure the moment that all the parties are comfortable with an announcement, it will be announced and it will be in the media. But currently, it’s a process and let’s just leave it like that.”
Cullen’s departure next summer won’t distract. He confirmed as much in unequivocal fashion and Nienaber reiterated the message.
“Yeah, look, for us, nothing has changed,” said Nienaber. “It’s the same coaching group. Maybe a couple of players came in and went out, but if you look at the team and how we operate and how we work, it’s the same.
“I think all of us as a team and coaches operating at this level, you should be professional enough to go and get on with the job. That’s the main thing for us, get on with the job. It’s been announced well in advance, and we keep doing what we’re doing.
“We have a role to fulfil within a big, high-performance organisation and we’re going to fulfil that. For us, from a whole coaching and management and staff point of view and players point of view, nothing has changed.”
He was speaking from Johannesburg, where Leinster are preparing for their opening URC game against the Lions on Saturday.
All teams need to evolve, a process that keeps the environment fresh and the opposition guessing. Not everything is discarded in the process. Wrinkles, tweaks, fine-tuning, give it whatever name, it’s nuanced.
The South African didn’t go into the specifics but he did make the point that Leinster must reach the same pitch in standards that they demonstrated in winning a URC title and reaching another Champions Cup final last season.
“The first thing for us is to make sure that we almost try and get back to where we were last season again. I’m taking my hat off to the players and the effort they’ve put in, if you take the consistency of performance that we had as a club playing in the two finals.
“If you look at the Premiership, I think Northampton won the Premiership. They got knocked out in Europe in the quarter-finals. Then the same with Toulouse – they won the Top 14, they got knocked out in the quarter-finals. Bordeaux won the Champions Cup and they didn’t make the top eight in the Top 14.
Jacques Nienaber says the priority is to get Leinster in the kind of form that saw them win the URC last season as well as reaching the Champions Cup final. Photograph: Ben Brady/Inpho
“From a consistency level across the board, I think the prize is trying to get there again. Obviously, there’s been new signings, new players coming in. Some of our old core players have left, so there’s been some evolution within the squad already. It’s making sure that we try and get back to where we were.
“If you look to last year, this game (opening game of the season), we played the Stormers and we ended up [losing] 35-0. The reality of the start of the season is not necessarily a reflection of what the end of the season is going to look like, but the key thing for us is to try and start as strong as possible.
“Obviously, there’s some things that we worked on and like you said, every team has to evolve. I think I probably won’t go into too much detail for obvious reasons on what that is from a tactical point of view. I’m sure there will be ups and downs and things that we worked on that will work and some of it won’t work.
“For us as a broad [goal], it’s just to try and get the squad back to where we were last season and then kick on from there. Get back to the foundation and then try and kick on from there.”
Leinster issued an injury update in which they confirmed Andrew Porter, Tommy O’Brien and the returning Joey Carbery are raring to go. “Yeah, look, they’re (Porter and O’Brien) in full training. It’s an assessment that we will have to make between coaches and medical staff and the players at the back end of the week when we get to the team announcement.”
And Carbery? “He’s probably in the same bracket as those two.”
Leinster also confirmed that Jamison Gibson-Park (minor groin injury), Cormac Foley (calf), Jordan Larmour (calf), Diarmuid Mangan (foot) and James Culhane (hamstring) will not be considered for selection while there were no further updates on longer-term injuries to Jack Boyle, RG Snyman, Caelan Doris and Paddy McCarthy.