When two great teams meet, it is the power of their coaches’ strategic planning that can determine the outcome of the match.
The preparation for this Champions Cup final, from both Leo Cullen and Mark McCall is paramount. This match is highly unusual because both coaches have won the title before and the current champions, Leinster, are slight underdogs to a Saracens team that have been a cut above all in Europe this season.
Having worked with Leo when he was a young player, I know he is a great person. A giant, modest, friendly, gentle, family man. He is also hardworking, honest, intelligent and meticulous in his preparation. He is a competitor and, like all who last in professional sport, he is a winner.
Mark McCall has made an outstanding success of Saracens . . . and established a powerful culture
More than any other game in his coaching career to date, this is his moment. If Leo can forge a superior tactical plan and his players implement that plan using the “savage basics done with ruthless efficiency and accurate aggression” then Leinster can come away with, what I believe, will be the club’s greatest victory of the professional era.
Saracens are an exceptionally good team. They have dominated every opponent in every match in this year’s Heineken Cup. That is rare.
Powerful culture
They are brilliantly coached by McCall. Like Leo, Mark is a total gentleman. Despite all his success, “Small McCall” remains the same gentle, lovely bloke, I coached with 20 years ago. Having left Ulster under something of a cloud, he has made an outstanding success of Saracens. He has established a powerful culture within their environment that will keep Saracens at the top end of European rugby for years to come.
Like Leo he is a winner and, in his own style, a fabulous tactician.
Ireland have two excellent coaches on show in tomorrow’s final. We should be proud of both.
Saracens have one very big advantage over Leinster. They are in top form.
If Leinster only play to the same standard they did against Toulouse, they will be defeated. It’s that simple.
The key to Leinster’s planning is to ask themselves the question: “What is it that Saracens do not want us to do?”
In other words, give Saracens a game they don’t want to play. Impose themselves on the opposition.
This starts at set play.
Leinster must make Saracens’s possession from line-outs and scrums a mess. Give Saracens the front of the lineout, because ball from two is difficult to attack with, but the rest of the lineout has to be a dockyard brawl and Luke McGrath must be an absolute pest at the base of Saracens’ scrum.
A try-scoring, pre-planned move from a trademark Leinster set play would be welcome.
Owen Farrell must be stopped from attacking the gain-line and playing flat. His brilliant short-kicking game must be pressurised
Saracens’s outstanding player is Owen Farrell. He must not be permitted time with the ball in his hands. Leinster must deny him time and space and force him to pass or kick early.
He must be stopped from attacking the gain-line and playing flat. His brilliant short-kicking game must be pressurised: when he gets the ball, he also gets a Leinster defender. Make Farrell play deep behind the gain-line and Leinster have a chance.
Leinster also have to deal with Saracens’s habitual box kicking and their exceptional chasing game.
Counterpunch
Saracens personify the saying that “we kick away possession to get it back in a better position”. Leinster have to escort Saracens’s chasers back and form a legal wall to protect their backfield catches. Just as England did to Ireland in the Six Nations.
Like a boxer who has to counterpunch against a powerful opponent, Leinster have to counter-kick Saracens. They need an intelligent kicking game to turn the big English forwards around. It has to be smart because a poor kick will invite the brilliant Saracens counterattack into play and it can destroy them.
Against Munster, the pace of Saracens’s ruck ball was what the Kiwis call “LQB” – lightning quick ball. Saracens won every collision. This allowed them to play the game at a pace Munster could not live with.
Leinster must slow Saracens’s attacking pace down. To do this, firstly they have to win the collisions. To be technical, they require two men in the tackle. A “chopper” around the legs and a “topper” at the ball to slow it down. Then they must be selective with which rucks to contest, to again slow the pace of the ruck ball.
This must be supported with fast line speed to win the “corridor of power” – winning the space between the attacking and defensive lines.
Now here is the vital part that is not technical.
Leinster must ring Saracens’s bell with extreme physicality. It’s time for the D4 boys to roll up their sleeves and deliver aggression, niggle and good old-fashioned “lads let’s go bash them up”.
When the Champions Cup is at stake, you do not take a knife to a gun fight.
For Leinster to defeat the form side of Europe it will take great tactics, courage and a massive physical assault. Leinster require their great players to play great. All 23 must know the best 80 minutes of their year is mandatory. Anything else will end in defeat.
This is a brutally tough assignment for Leinster. If they can win this one, the taste will be sweet indeed. The sweetest of all time.
