The monster Australian rugby helped build: Leinster Lions return to haunt the Wallabies

The British and Irish Lions’ plans to defeat the Wallabies will rely on a system built in Dublin and shaped by a series of coaches steeped in Australian rugby.

Fourteen Lions have now been called up from Leinster, Ireland’s dominant province. Coach Andy Farrell has long leaned on the team while coaching Ireland, and is now doing the same with the Lions. The Leinster machine, which surged under Michael Cheika and was then refined by now Wallabies coach Joe Schmidt, will be decisive in this series.

Five of the seven head coaches over the past 25 years at Leinster have had an Australian rugby background: Matt Williams, Gary Ella, Cheika, Schmidt and Matt O’Connor.

Former Waratahs coach Williams points out that he cannot take any of the credit for the later success at Leinster. That goes largely to Cheika, who won the club’s first European title in 2009, and was followed by Schmidt in 2010 and 2012, before later success under former Ireland international Leo Cullen.

Williams arrived in Dublin in 2000 and was able to help infuse an Australian system into the club that continues to pay dividends to Ireland and the Lions today.

“The irony of this situation is that Leinster are benefiting from an Australian system,” Williams said.

“They simply run the Australian system, from schools, with seven or eight elite schools going into their senior team by playing the same rugby right through the system.

“It’s exactly what Australian rugby did when it was at its zenith. You had seven or eight schools in Queensland and seven or eight schools in Sydney playing in a similar way, being influenced because schoolboy coaches were educated and influenced by the senior coaches, and how they played.

“They had very, very similar philosophies of play, excellent technical coaching, right down to 15-year-olds, and the system just kept self-perpetuating.”

Unlike in NSW, where a young, talented player who is a member of the Waratahs academy will often consider interest from the NRL, at Leinster, everyone is desperate to reach the senior team. By extension, if you can make the Leinster team, you are almost guaranteed an opportunity with Ireland.

Randwick coach Shaun Berne played for Leinster and went on to lead its academy for seven years, working with current Lions such as James Ryan and Tadhg Furlong.

If a player is awarded a spot in the Leinster academy, Berne saw how players were put under immense pressure to justify their place in an elite environment from the outset.

“To get an academy contract at Leinster you had to be at a completely different level; there are future internationals in the making; they were ready to go coming out of school,” Berne said.

“[At senior level] if you didn’t perform, the next guy was going to take your jersey and that’s what drove the standards. That’s why the training sessions were sometimes harder than the games themselves.”

The coaching tenures of Cheika and Schmidt are still revered in Dublin. Standards were lifted each year. Schmidt had famously highlighted Ireland’s greatest player, Brian O’Driscoll, in an early analysis session, telling the centre, “good players take bad passes” after the centre dropped a ball at his feet. The rest of the squad understood that excellence was a non-negotiable.

In Australia, with so many uncertain combinations from four nations, Farrell is leaning on his tried and trusted. At Leinster, players have grown up together as teenagers and barely need to say a word to understand how to signal a shift in tempo. In the heat of a Lions’ Test, this is invaluable.

Former Ireland rugby international and current analyst Bernard Jackman played for Leinster for five years and has watched his former club dominate Irish rugby. This year, a Northampton side turbocharged by young Lion Henry Pollock stunned Leinster in the European Cup semi-final. Jackman understands that although Leinster isn’t perhaps the force of old, it still gives Farrell an ability to use a well-worn road map to win this Test series.

“I think Farrell is someone who placed a lot of faith in players who have been there and done that for him in the past,” Jackman said.

“I think the fact is that so many of those Leinster players play together for Ireland, and then they go back and they’re the backbone of the Leinster team.

“There has been a shift in Leinster over the last year in how they play, and that hasn’t really suited Ireland, but those players are still players that Farrell knows, they understand how he wants to play, and I suppose he’s trying to accelerate everything for that first Test, so it’s more natural he’s going to trust them.”

Jackman also believes that there is still some doubt about this talented group of Leinster players’ ability to win at the highest level consistently, which could give the Wallabies some much-needed hope.

“Realistically, the Leinster and Ireland players have a very good high win percentage and there’s a Grand Slam thrown in there and a Six Nations (title) in 2022, but realistically, you can’t say they’re dominating Europe like Toulon or Saracens have done,” Jackman said.

“He (Farrell) is getting a winning mentality, but yes, he probably feels there’s still something to prove there in terms of being out-and-out match-winning.”

All matches of The British & Irish Lions Tour to Australia are live & on demand on Stan Sport, with Wallabies Tests in 4K. All Test matches live and free on Channel 9 & 9Now.