{"id":483923,"date":"2026-06-05T04:51:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T04:51:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/483923\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T04:51:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T04:51:14","slug":"bernard-jackmans-telling-revelation-about-leinster-coach-jacques-nienaber","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/483923\/","title":{"rendered":"Bernard Jackman’s telling revelation about Leinster coach Jacques Nienaber"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Bernard Jackman has told Leinster to give Jacques Nienaber free rein to do what he wants with the side amid suggestions that his influence is being limited.<\/p>\n

The Irish giants hired the double Rugby World Cup winner as a replacement for outgoing senior coach Stuart Lancaster in 2023.<\/p>\n

Nienaber<\/a> was tasked with bringing Investec Champions Cup glory to the province after missing out in three finals under Lancaster, but the South African has so far failed to deliver that success.<\/p>\n

While he obviously has to take some of the blame, Jackman<\/a> reckons that the 53-year-old hasn\u2019t been given the authority that a person of his ability and experience should command.<\/p>\n

Irish rugby \u2018lucky to have\u2019 Nienaber<\/p>\n

\u201cMy understanding is that players value him, my understanding as well is the players maybe feel he hasn\u2019t been given as much say in what\u2019s happened, that\u2019s just the narrative that\u2019s coming out from the dressing room,\u201d he said on the RTE Rugby podcast.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou sign a double World Cup-winning coach and you don\u2019t put stabilisers on him \u2013 they\u2019re not an apprentice \u2013 and that\u2019s the challenge.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, Leo\u2019s the head coach but the reality is that this team looks less like a Jacques Nienaber team than it did in the past.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow there\u2019s another challenge we haven\u2019t talked about; when your breakdown and your set-piece crumbles, your defence and everything else is going to break as well, so it\u2019s not just the defence in isolation.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut he\u2019s a phenomenal coach, he has the power to motivate, he\u2019s a winner. I\u2019d like to hope he would get another year and that he feels valued. I hope he feels valued because we\u2019re so lucky to have him here.<\/p>\n

\u201cI understand the debate around Leinster\u2019s<\/a> way of playing and all that stuff, but once you make that decision to sign him, I think you need to double down then and make everything based around that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ireland great defends Jacques Nienaber over criticism which \u2018lacks context\u2019 after South African\u2019s bombshell comments<\/a><\/p>\n

Jackman ultimately doesn\u2019t believe that this is currently a Nienaber-type team and that, throughout his tenure, Leinster have rarely resembled a side you would expect to see from the South African.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Leinster team I saw post-Six Nations last year for the Glasgow and Harlequins games [where they won 52-0 and 62-0 respectively], it wasn\u2019t the same style of play that had been happening a little bit before that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis first pre-season post-Toulouse loss [in the 2024 Champions Cup final], I thought September, October, November and December, I know it didn\u2019t please people on the eye, but that looked like the type of rugby I would expect a Jacques Nienaber-influenced team to play.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince then it\u2019s been a little bit mixed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nienaber\u2019s bombshell comments<\/p>\n

A significant amount of criticism has come Nienaber\u2019s way this season and that culminated in a explosive press conference on Monday where he defended his methods and claimed that he didn\u2019t feel \u2018valued\u2019 in Dublin.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought it was a very strong argument,\u201d Jackman added. \u201cI think we would all love press conferences like that where there\u2019s actually someone that has really strong opinions, is experienced, coherent and consistent in his message, and there\u2019s respect there and you can go back and forth.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom a Leinster point of view, do you want that out there? No, I don\u2019t think you do. From above, Leinster will be very concerned about how their communications has kind of got a bit wild the last three or four press conferences, even post-match in Bordeaux.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor us and the fans, it\u2019s something to talk about. We\u2019re not talking about the team now, so maybe that\u2019s the plan.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Opinion: Jacques Nienaber should walk if he truly believes bombshell claim<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bernard Jackman has told Leinster to give Jacques Nienaber free rein to do what he wants with the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483924,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1100,61,60,28576,10562,43,112,14881],"class_list":["post-483923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-home-page","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jacques-nienaber","tag-leinster","tag-news","tag-sports","tag-united-rugby-championship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483923","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=483923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}