Twenty-eight year old man on an exercise bike crying in a brand new gym with his phone propped up watching Leinster versus Northampton.
Maybe it was sweat. Maybe it was a bit of both.
In all honesty, I’m all cried out. Marseille, Lansdowne Road, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, or the Hot Totty as I’ve heard it been called. Yeah, that’s what the kids are calling it, you should try it out.
It’s been a weird year, Leinster wise. I’ve tuned in abroad. I’m seven hours ahead in Perth, Western Australia. It’s funny, I’m hours ahead but am behind when it comes to tuning in for my rugby hit. The routine initially consisted of headphones in, on the patio furniture at the crack of dawn. Then we got a tv, yeah, I’m earning. Now, I try and watch all my rugby on the bike, the stationary bike. I’m at that stage in life now where I can’t afford to sit around all day and watch the footy. Timewise and I can’t afford the sixty million subscriptions Rugby Union has entangled itself in I’d need to enjoy a full day.
Social media is another speed bump. Social media, the apps, they’re ready to spring a result on you if you’re silly enough to look. That’s why it’s imperative to make your morning coffee with the phone in the other room and get yourself to the gym before you’ve had a chance to spoil it for yourself.
Your reward? 80 minutes of rugby. In this case, 80 minutes of some of the most incredible, special, and talented generation of players play some of the worst rugby they’ve produced in a European Semi-Final.
This one hurts the most. Not literally. The final in Lansdowne Road sucked the most. Extra time in London, you win some you lose some. Marseille, Leinster never really had a hold of it.
However this semi-final loss is going to do the most damage. The most damage to belief, the most damage in the brand and most damage to supporters in seats.
Questions are being asked across the board. Supposedly there’s mounting pressure on Leo Cullen from fans. I’m not so sure. Twitter was a shitty place before a pasty faced Elon bought it over. Now the filters have fallen by the way side and you can read even more of it.
One of the most impressive things about Leinster is their performance across the board as an organisation and this will stand to them when they “Look at themselves in the mirror”. Leo’s not going anywhere. He’s an easy target. When Leinster nil teams, it’s deemed autopilot, when they lose to Northampton, he’s failed to set a tone.
What I would say to the fairweather fan, that guy with the Brown Thomas bag, is that it’s not so long ago that this team was middling.
It had all the pieces and no one at the top who could maximise it. Remember Matt O’Connor? It wasn’t all his fault. For all intents and purposes, he seemed to be a good guy, he just didn’t have that edge you need to be the top dog. Leinster had talent but was top-heavy. Darcy and O’Driscoll were still knocking around. Sean O’Brien was perpetually injured and Jimmy Gopperth was steering the ship with Johnny Sexton playing in France.
This Leinster team has every single resource out there available to them. Listening to comments from the players, there’s no doubt the coaches they have are world class. World Cup -winning second rower, the best inside centre in the world and a litany of Irish internationals who are making up the bulk of the British & Irish Lions players. I go back and forth but I just don’t see how after this semi-final exit, you can point to the coaching box.
Leinster fans have never felt so deflated. They want an answer and I think Leinster would do well to open the doors a little more than usual and show some of the behind the scenes thinking. However, the grass isn’t always greener and this team isn’t middling in mediocrity, it’s falling at the final hurdle. I’m not so sure that, with a change, Leinster continue to be a top dog in Europe.
All eyes are now on the URC, a competition they’ve never won and lifting a trophy would go a long way to reminding these players it’s not impossible.
One more trophyless year and talk of the Curse of the Bambino will grow.