![\"during](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/00239d14-614.jpg\"\/)
\nLewis Moody (l) and Leo Cullen (r) playing together for Leicester against the Scarlets in 2007<\/p>\n
“As someone who obviously played with Lewis as a former team-mate, he was an amazing team-mate,” Cullen said. “Tough beyond belief.”<\/p>\n
“He is brilliant. He’s such a great character. So positive as a team-mate and a smile on his face every day, even when he had his injury challenges, even when I was there at that point, jeez, 20 years ago now.<\/p>\n
“That’s the thing, the rugby community, there’s so much respect, I think, between the two teams. For me personally, nothing but the highest respect for Leicester Tigers.<\/p>\n
“And as I know, Lewis is basically a brilliant individual. So I hope everyone can support as best they can, please.”<\/p>\n
Cullen\u2019s time playing with Moody at Leicester coincided with the Tigers being the team to beat from the English Premiership.<\/p>\n
Between 2000 and 2009, the Tigers won five Premiership titles and were runners-up on three other occasions, while they were European champions on two occasions, reaching two other finals in that decade.<\/p>\n
The last of those finals was in 2009, where Cullen was captaining Leinster in the decider at Murrayfield, with the Irish side 19-16 winners.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/001bab36-614.jpg\"\/)
\nLeo Cullen captained Leinster to the 2009 Champions Cup title, where they defeated Leicester in the final<\/p>\n
The former second row played 56 times for Leicester during that two-year spell from 2005 to 2007, and captained them on 15 occasions.<\/p>\n
And he insists those two years “massively” shaped the rest of his playing and coaching career.<\/p>\n
“Pat Howard, he was very creative in terms of a young head coach. And then Richard Cockerill, who was obviously starting off in his journey.<\/p>\n
“Cockers was a hard taskmaster, I’ll give him that much, so much attention to detail, but all hard work.<\/p>\n
“There’s no secret to success, is there? Preparation and hard work play a huge part in that, and that’s the bit that will always be with me. It was tough going, worked hard but I absolutely loved it.<\/p>\n
“Great camaraderie, people coming together, but there’s that expectation again about whoever you represent.<\/p>\n
“And listen, when you arrive at a game and you see the people queuing outside for two hours before to get into the ground to get their spot on the terrace, there’s a positive expectation there and a positive pressure.<\/p>\n
“I followed lots of the different individuals, stayed in touch with them and there’s a big WhatsApp group of the ‘Sabertooths\u2019 – former players \u2013 that I\u2019m still on.<\/p>\n
“I loved it, couldn’t speak highly enough of it. So did it shape me? Yeah, it shaped me in many different ways,” he added.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/002001ba-614.jpg\"\/)
\nLeinster lead 10-5 in their head-to-head record against the Tigers<\/p>\n
Leinster have won each of the four recent meetings of the sides \u2013 two in Dublin and two at Welford Road \u2013 and with the province unbeaten in Champions Cup pool games for the last seven years, they will be expected to continue that winning run this evening.<\/p>\n
The province are dealing with a hefty injury list, with Andrew Porter, Garry Ringrose, RG Snyman, Ryan Baird, Jamie Osborne and Hugo Keenan among the international talent sidelined, but they have been able to bolster their midfield with New Zealand international Rieko Ioane.<\/p>\n
The 88-cap All Black made his debut off the bench in last week\u2019s 45-28 win against Harlequins, but comes into the starting side this week, forming an experienced centre partnership with Robbie Henshaw.<\/p>\n
“You\u2019re just hoping he gets on the ball and produces in terms of what he’s able to do,” the Leinster coach said of Ioane, who is on a short-term deal in Dublin until the end of the season.<\/p>\n
“So, the ball in space, he’s going to be incredibly dangerous because when he moves, he’s an incredible athlete.<\/p>\n
“Ideally, you want to see him get ball in space but everyone else on the team will have to do a lot of work for that to make that happen. The forwards need to make sure you do their piece first in terms of how our half-backs control the game.<\/p>\n
“And then we can try and get the ball into some space hopefully. It’s not like you can start by just going, \u2018okay, we’ll try and get the ball into this guy’s hands if there’s no space created\u2019.<\/p>\n
“So we need to create space for him first and foremost.”<\/p>\n
Listen to the RT\u00c9 Rugby podcast on Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a> or wherever you get your podcasts<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n Listen to live commentary of Munster v Gloucester on Saturday from 5.30pm on RT\u00c9 Radio 1<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leinster and the Leicester Tigers can’t stay away from each other. It’s not quite on the same level…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":187619,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-187618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187618\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}