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Much to the ire of some of the Rugby Family in the UK, Leinster are preparing for yet another Investec Champions Cup semi-final on home soil this evening.
A last-four game in the capital is starting to feel like an annual tradition; for the fifth time out of seven seasons the province have had the chance to book their trip to the final in front of their own crowd. On each of those occasions they’ve won, and done so comfortably.
Home advantage, particularly in this competition, has always been a strong currency, but that wasn’t always the case for Leinster.
Their first three appearances in the semis of this competition all came at Lansdowne Road and each one was as disappointing as the last: a 23-14 defeat to Cardiff in the inaugural tournament in 1996; a shock 21-14 loss against Perpignan in 2003 which denied them a home final, and a 30-6 thumping against eventual winners Munster in 2006.
Cherished Croke Park memories – Rugby returns to Jones’ Road on Saturday as Leinster take on Northampton in a Champions Cup semi-final.
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This evening, Leo Cullen’s side go up against the Northampton Saints (5.30pm, live on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player) for what will be their 15th semi-final appearance, a number that only five-time winners Toulouse will have bettered by the end of this weekend. The French champions host Harlequins on Sunday in this weekend’s other semi-final.
This semi-final also sees them return to the place where their luck changed.
After losing each of those first three semis at Lansdowne Road, their 2009 triumph over Munster at Croke Park was, in the eyes of many fans and former players, the defining moment in Leinster’s history.
We’ll skim through what happened next. Four Champions Cup titles, a Challenge Cup and six more URC titles arrived between 2009 and 2021, with three Champions Cup final losses in there also.
For a team that once fluffed their lines in home semi-finals, the current Leinster edition have probably saved their best for the final four in recent years, as back-to-back final losses to La Rochelle in 2022 and 2023 have shown.
In their last four home semi-finals, they beaten the Scarlets (in 2018) before a trio of wins against Toulouse (2019, 2022 ad 2023), those four victories were by an average of 20 points.
That just about sums up the size of the challenge facing Northampton Saints this evening.
The Saints won’t need to be reminded about how devastating the Leinster machine can be. These sides have been regular combatants down the years, although it would be generous to describe their history as a rivalry.
Of the 10 previous meetings, Leinster have won nine, with Northampton’s only victory coming in a December 2013 pool game at the Aviva Stadium. In the five meetings since, Leinster have won each by an average of 29 points.
Northampton could, or potentially should, have won another. When the pair met in the 2011 Champions Cup final in Cardiff, the Saints were 22-6 in front at half time, only for a Johnny Sexton-inspired Leinster to score 27 unanswered points after the break, winning the second of what would be three titles in four years.
In a neat twist, both Leinster head coach Cullen and Northampton boss Phil Dowson were playing that day, as were Saints pair Courtney Lawes and Alex Moon, both of whom start this evening.
The only member of Leinster’s squad today who took to the pitch in Cardiff 13 years ago is Cian Healy. The ageless loose-head (36-years old, if you were wondering) will make a record 111th appearance in the Champions Cup today if he comes off the bench. It will also be Healy’s 275th game in all competitions for the province, five short of Devin Toner’s record.
Hugo Keenan and Garry Ringrose miss out once again. Keenan has failed to recover from the hip injury which ruled him out of the quarter-final win over La Rochelle, while Ringrose has played just once since January due to a troublesome shoulder issue.
Ciarán Frawley starts at full-back again in Keenan’s absence, where he has looked assured both for Leinster and Ireland this season, while Jamie Osborne continues at centre alongside Robbie Henshaw, where his powerful left foot provides Leinster with an extra kicking option.
There are two changes in total from the win over La Rochelle last month, with Josh van der Flier and Ross Molony coming in for Will Connors and Jason Jenkins.
If Leinster do suffer a surprise defeat, it won’t be down to fatigue. Of their starting XV, only Frawley and Molony featured on their recent tour of South Africa while the rest of this week’s starting side had two weekends off to prepare for the Saints.
“There is no real easy way to do that trip. I am not sure what is exactly right and wrong,” Cullen said, as he reflected on their two heavy defeats in the URC.
“Obviously you have a few big weeks, guys coming off the Six Nations, pretty much straight back into it. We played the Bulls, Leicester, La Rochelle at the Aviva so it’s trying to strike a balance.”
If Cullen felt the need to justify resting his front-liners in recent weeks, Northampton’s defeat to Harlequins last week in the Premiership would be an easy reason to highlight.
The Premiership leaders lost captain Lewis Ludlam to a shoulder injury in that game, while wing Ollie Sleightholme suffered concussion, and both have been ruled out this week.
Sleightholme has scored 12 tries in 17 games this season and has been a key member of an impressive backline which provided five players to England’s Six Nations squad this year.
With Alex Mitchell at scrum-half, Tommy Freeman flirting between wing and centre and George Furbank at full-back, the Saints have exciting attacking talent, which is balanced out by a smart kicking game through Fin Smith.
In the pack, Lawes stands head and shoulders above the rest. The 105-cap England international is entering his final months at Franklin’s Gardens before a future move to Brive, but has been as good as ever this season, and his nine turnovers won is second only to Will Evans of Harlequins in the Champions Cup.
While Leinster have won every game on their route back to the semi-finals, they haven’t been racking up the numbers like they did in 2022 and 2023. Maybe, they’re keeping something in the tank.
The big difference is what they’re doing without the ball, as Jacques Nienaber’s defensive plans begin to bed in. Rugby analyst Carrick Blake has shown how the province have improved drastically in ‘Pass per Defensive Action’ (PPDA), a metric which measures how many passes a team allows an opponents before attempting a tackle. This season they are in the top 3% for PPDA across Europe’s top three leagues, compared to the 69th percentile previously.
In short, Leinster’s defensive line are putting teams under big pressure, and forcing them into the split-second decisions that can often yield mistakes.
For Northampton, the challenge is to find a way through, over or around that defensive wall. As Munster learned in the Round of 16 in particular, the Premiership leaders have the ability to slice through a defence with an array of clever and innovative strike plays off set-pieces.
They have the talent to find the space in Leinster defence, but it’s difficult to see them doing it enough to win.
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Watch Leinster v Northampton in the Investec Champions Cup semi-finals on Saturday from 4.45pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player, follow a live blog on rte.ie/sport and the RTÉ News app and listen on Saturday Sport on RTÉ Radio 1
