Leo Cullen: ‘We won’t be taking bullshit off anybody this year. Nobody. None of our players, nobody’

Sport, as well as politics, is sprinkled with examples of the head coach or manager’s authority being undermined by their impending departure in an anticlimactic final campaign. Leo Cullen has no intention of this happening to Leinster under his watch, however.

Cullen made it clear that his enthusiasm ahead of a 12th season as Leinster head coach has, if anything, been heightened by the decision to also make this his last at the helm of his native province, which he has served for all but two years of his adult life.