Could URC success salvage season for Leinster?

While most rugby fans spent last weekend training at Principality Stadium for the Champions Cup final, Dublin’s audience was largely among the lowest.

You can tell that James Lowe, one of his team-mates, was one of the young family members who traveled to the zoo with Leinster, Ireland, and James Lowe, who would soon become the Lions’ wing, found something else to occupy the hours that eventually saw Bordeaux-Begles become European champions.

Leinster’s quest for a fifth star has continued since their semi-final defeat by beaten finalists Northampton Saints, which is their first since 2021.

Seven years have passed since they won their fourth title in Bilbao against Racing 92.

Leo Cullen’s team is currently in a strange limbo as they prepare for the United Rugby Championship (URC) play-offs and Saturday’s quarter-final against Scarlets.

It is obvious that a team must do a lot to get their Leinster form back in recent seasons.

After all, there are only a select few teams in the world where a drought would be defined by seven years without a Champions Cup.

Since then, they have lost to Saracens in quarter-final and final, La Rochelle in quarter-final and two finals, to Toulouse in final, and to this year’s semi-final against the Saints.

There was a logic in what lock James Ryan said last year about the “risk of failing greatly” when trying to become greatness despite having won numerous significant games throughout the era.

However, this particular squad is in danger of being forgotten for missing out on such games rather than for the good they have done in those games, like the Buffalo Bills and their subsequent defeats in four consecutive Super Bowls between 1991 and 1994.

All other options will feel diminished when one competition becomes your season’s lodestar.

In a 2023 interview that appears frequently on social media following Leinster’s European defeats, Prop Andrew Porter made this point very clearly.

“You don’t see many Pro14s or URCs on a jersey,” said one player. Before the second of those finals against La Rochelle, he said, “You see those stars that are on the jersey”.

However, it seems like the domestic staple has grown in significance this year.

Following a four-game winning streak between 2018 and 2021, Leinster has not won any of the previous three, which includes the participation of South African sides Bulls, Sharks, Stormers, and Lions.

It will not have gone unnoticed that this particular piece of silverware has also recently proven to be elusive, according to forwards coach Robin McBryde, who said it would represent “a step in the right direction.”

After three seasons, there would be value in simply winning silverware again, despite the success of many of their squads in Ireland.

“For Ireland, we have been able to do that in recent years, but we haven’t been able to transfer that to Leinster,” said Lowe.

“You won’t win with Leinster because you won with Ireland,” the statement goes.

Lowe notes that former Leinster teammates Cian Healy and Ross Byrne are in their final years sporting Leinster blue, which will also have an emotional component.

He said, “Some of the best days of your life are when you win silverware together.”

Cian Healy must have a second medal around his neck in order to leave Leinster. Ross Byrne is not doing him or Ross Byrne justice.