2011/12 was great, says Rob Kearney, but the world has moved on since.
The Leinster fullback believes his team are the best non-French team in Europe. Given the amount of euro the Top 14’s big spenders are, well, spending, Kearney’s claim could have a certain, masochistic allure.
However, Guinness PRO12 form does not back up the 29-year-old’s words.
If Leinster lose to Ulster, on Friday, and Ospreys win, they could be stranded outside the league’s top four.
Kearney feels linking the current side to Joe Schmidt’s double Heineken Cup winners [of 2011 & 2012] is doing no-one at the province any favours.
‘One of the problems,’ he says, ‘is we keep comparing back to 2012 or 2011. We’re different. It is a completely different environment. New players, new coaches… We can’t keep looking backwards. We are where we are now. Yes, we’ve had a few more internationals gone [this season], there have been more injuries but you’ve got to work with what you have.’
‘What’s healthy about [that comparison with past Leinster teams]?’ Kearney proclaimed. ‘I don’t know how many guys have played in 2011/12. We’ve [lost] nine or 10 of those guys. If we had the same players and coaches then yeah [you can compare] but you are not able to do it now.’
Looking at the Leinster squad that beat Ulster in the 2012 Heineken Cup final, eight have moved on [Johnny Sexton, Brad Thorn, Heinke van der Merwe, Nathan White, John Cooney] or retired [Brian O’Driscoll, Leo Cullen, Isa Nacewa]. Schmidt, Greg Feek and Jono Gibbes have left the coaching roster. Sean O’Brien, Cian Healy and Kevin McLaughlin, who played that game, have only started 10 games for the province this season. Kearney continued:
‘I’d be reluctant to use that transition workd because we are out of that now. Are we where we should be in the PRO12? No, we should be in the top four. Am I happy with where we are in Europe? No. I’d prefer to be in a final next week but we went… Okay, we didn’t play the most exciting rugby throughout the campaign but we were still the best out of the English, Irish, Welsh and Scottish sides, so we’ve done pretty well in Europe.’
Kearney admitted that Leinster had struggled during the Six Nations window and highlighted the dual defeats to Newport Gwent Dragons as the biggest disappointments.
He said, ‘I have no right to pull one of these younger guys, non-international guys aside and say “You’ve got to be better in these weeks”. That’s not my place. There needs to be an across the board acknowledgement that that is where it slipped up.’
Leinster are sticking to their declarations that ‘no-one believed’ in them, heading into a Champions Cup semi-final against Toulon, which they lost. Kearney continued the theme by saying, ‘We weren’t given a chance by the outside, but outside perception and what was happening over there is very different.’
‘Of course we are aware of the murmurs and the perceptions that are out there,’ he added. ‘When it gets a little bit aggressive, you batten down the hatches a little. You pay a little less attention to it, not that if affects your mind-set or how you play. You just become a little more bullet-proof.
‘The criticism of the way we are playing sometimes is [over the top] but, up until last week, we had lost one game in Europe, [secured] a home quarter, so I think it was a bit excessive.’
By naming a very strong side to face Ulster, Leinster are hoping to finally silence the critics that have been growing louder all season.
‘We’re backed into such a corner now that there’s literally no other option…Â We lose, we’re gone. It’s 100% survival, yeah. That’s exciting sometimes too. Ideally you’d like to be in the top four, but we’re not yet. It’s out of our hands. If we can win this week there will be a slip-up somewhere along the way over the next three weeks with one of the teams in the top four. We just have to hope that slip-up favours us.’
You can listen to some of the Kearney interview here:
