{"id":429660,"date":"2026-05-03T03:17:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T03:17:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/429660\/"},"modified":"2026-05-03T03:17:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T03:17:12","slug":"you-guys-love-throwing-the-boot-into-us-dont-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/429660\/","title":{"rendered":"‘You guys love throwing the boot into us, don\u2019t you?’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The emotional toll of watching his Leinster team scrape through another Champions Cup knockout tie<\/a> was stitched into all five minutes and 53 seconds of Leo Cullen\u2019s answer at the start of his post-match press conference on Saturday evening.<\/p>\n

The province had barely survived the day against a Toulon team that had found itself 18 points down with just 13 minutes to go before a stirring rally brought them to within five and one agonising missed pass for the try that would have claimed a famous win for them in Dublin.<\/p>\n

It was the most dramatic of end games and a thriller perfectly in keeping with Leinster<\/a>\u2019s recent history in a tournament where they have lost three finals and a semi-final in frustrating fashion and by a combination of just 16 points.<\/p>\n

The first question was the easiest of tee-ups: what he made of the game and, in particular, that last ten minutes.<\/p>\n

\u201cNaturally you try and protect things don\u2019t you? Where the other team is, they\u2019ve no protection, they\u2019re throwing everything at you. We were sitting in this room this time last year, we were in that situation, we were throwing everything at Northampton.<\/p>\n

\u201cListen, (Henry) Pollock gets a poach and it should have been a penalty, but nobody wants to report about it after. We should have had a penalty try and nobody wants to report on it. You just want to kick the boot into us, don\u2019t you?<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd that\u2019s the way it goes. The way I would see a semi-final is there are two teams going at it and there is a winner and loser and it\u2019s not to kick the team that loses. I thought Toulon were amazing to go at it until the very end.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re decided on the tightest of margins, semi-finals. You think back to semi-finals, we were away in France in 2012 and Wesley Fofana knocks the ball over the try line, and that\u2019s how we get to a final, it wasn\u2019t anything that we did.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cullen\u2019s point on the difficulty of winning this tournament is valid despite the dilution of the overall quality in the last 15 years, and he would dearly love to hear less of the criticisms and more support as they look towards a record ninth final appearance in Bilbao this month.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would be very kind to Toulon because they showed great spirit to the very end. It\u2019s what you want and it\u2019s why we love this tournament. We want to put ourselves in this situation every year but it\u2019s not easy because you\u2019re up against these juggernauts of teams.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first time Leinster have ever beaten Toulon today. We\u2019ll keep battling, we know it will be tough in a final.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have to applaud the players for the desire throughout the season to want to put themselves back in this situation because, listen, you guys love throwing the boot into us, don\u2019t you? You guys love throwing the boot into us when things don\u2019t go well, whatever sells, because you read plenty of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019d love if everyone got behind the team now when you\u2019re up against juggernauts of the game because it is not easy doing it, is it? We\u2019re the only Irish province left in the competition, but the group will still continue to do what we do. It\u2019s not always pretty, but we\u2019re up against some serious teams. It\u2019s insanely hard to win this competition.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0Cullen had encouraging news on the injuries Leinster picked up in the winning of this semi-final.<\/p>\n

Robbie Henshaw and Josh van der Flier both left the field after head knocks and will go through return-to-play protocols. Jack Conan hobbled off with a knee injury but was in \u201cbullish\u201d form about it afterwards. Tommy O\u2019Brien\u2019s issue was cramp.<\/p>\n

\u201cJamo (Gibson-Park) shipped a couple of knocks. You could see they were targeting him right from the very start of the game but Jamison is made of tough stuff. He managed himself through the game. Generally, I think the lads are not bad.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The emotional toll of watching his Leinster team scrape through another Champions Cup knockout tie was stitched into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":429661,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[32728,42,11287,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-429660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-champions-cup","tag-headlines","tag-leinster-rugby","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429660","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=429660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}