Ireland great suggests Leinster won’t be able ‘to tempt Jacques Nienaber to stay’ and highlights ‘the bit the URC hasn’t developed yet’
Gordon D'Arcy (inset) has had plenty to say about Jacques Nienaber's chances of succeeding Leo Cullen at Leinster (INPHO/Nick Elliott and Associated Press)
Ireland great Gordon D’Arcy can’t see ex-Springboks boss Jacques Nienaber succeeding Leo Cullen as the new Leinster boss next year.
The long-serving Cullen confirmed on Monday that 2026/27 will be his last at the helm at the Irish club he has led since taking over from Australian Matt O’Connor for the 2015/16 season.
Nienaber has been on Cullen’s Leinster staff as a senior coach since his arrival in Dublin after leading South Africa to their 2023 Rugby World Cup title as head coach.
However, despite knowing the lay of the land and how the Irish system works at provincial level, D’Arcy, the 2009 Ireland Grand Slam midfielder and three-time Heineken Cup champion with Leinster, can’t envisage the South African getting the top job after Cullen exits.
Hasn’t been universally popular
Although Leinster won their second successive United Rugby Championship title last Friday with a comprehensive win over the Bulls in Dublin, their more defensive Nienaber-influenced style of play hasn’t been universally popular with the club still searching for its first European title since 2018.
This eight-year gap and counting resulted in a fractious media briefing following last month’s Champions Cup final hammering at the hands of Bordeaux, with Nienaber rumbustiously tackling his critics. Despite the coach’s passionate defence of his methods, D’Arcy maintains that Nienaber’s system doesn’t suit the players that Leinster have.
Speaking on Off The Ball Breakfast on Tuesday about the list of media front-runners in the race to become the new Leinster boss, D’Arcy said: “There is so much hindsight bias going on with all of this. Just wild. I read something there about Stuart Lancaster (he was replaced by Nienaber as senior coach in 2023). Like, the Stuart Lancaster piece hadn’t worked either, so the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and looking for a different result.
“It wasn’t working, so it went from one end to the other end, which was Nienaber going ‘we need toughness’. So, they were solving one problem by changing and giving up something else. They gave up a little bit of attack focus and players have talked about this, that they don’t spend as much time on skills as they do on the physical preparation but they tried it.
“I would commend Leo for doing that, but you are then judged ultimately by the decisions you make, which is the hard piece. Some people are going, ‘It hasn’t worked, we should have stayed with (what we had)’. But that is really easy to say. At the time, it wasn’t working, Stuart was moving on and they needed to try something different.
“I would also argue that I don’t think you would be able to tempt Jacques Nienaber to stay after the press conference he gave. He feels that pressure as well, he feels that sentiment and is ‘if I am not wanted, I’ll leave, I’ll go somewhere else’. He would be very, very unlikely to take that.”
Leinster have reached four of the last five Champions Cup finals. However, while they only lost by three and one-point margins to La Rochelle and then took Toulouse to extra-time, they endured a 22-point thumping at the hands of Bordeaux last month, leaving D’Arcy claiming Cullen’s team is now “light years” behind what is being produced at the top end of the Prem in England and the Top 14 in France.
“Having looked at the style of rugby Leinster play, I don’t necessarily think it suits the players that are there at the moment,” he said. “The gap between the top three or four teams in the Premiership, the gap between the top six teams in the Top 14 and Leinster has widened. I don’t think we are as competitive as we could be.
“If you look at Northampton, would you be confident that we would beat Northampton with they played at the weekend? We lost to them in last year’s (European) semi-final, and they were the better team on the day with how they played. We moved really away from that, that attacking free-flowing rugby.
“I watched both of the Top 14 semi-finals, and what they are doing versus what we are doing is light-years (behind). It’s that continuity-based game, Noel McNamara’s zero-ruck rugby. You can’t change in a season like that, but there is a big pre-season for Leinster to see if they want to continue with what they have done for the last few years, or are they going to try and catch up to the way rugby is being played by the top teams.
“You look at Robbie Henshaw, you look at Garry Ringrose, what they have been asked to do over the last three years is to be very direct but at various points in their career they were free-flowing, off-loading, passing, decision-making players, so absolutely they can do that, but a challenge is they do need certainty at 10 and that can take a little bit of the load off Jamison Gibson-Park. A lot of it is mindset.”
Reflecting on some of the other coaches linked to the Leinster job, including Argentina boss Felipe Contepomi and La Rochelle coach Ronan O’Gara, D’Arcy added: “The names that have been listed out, they have just been listed out. I don’t think there is anything concrete in behind it. Felipe is coaching an international team. Is this (Leinster job) a step up, step down, I don’t know. What would be the draw to Leinster as opposed to being at home in Argentina?
“For Leinster, most coaches would be looking at that [the Cullen exit] and going, ‘Am I just walking into the same pressure he is leaving’, and do I have the raw materials to deliver what is the expectation?”
Asked if Bordeaux’s assistant McNamara was a credible option, D’Arcy said: “I think so.” He then weighed up the merits of O’Gara. “When you have been a coach of a Top 14 club and you have a free market and you can mould your squad or change your squad every year as well then coach on top of it, is the Irish system really that attractive?
“There can be a confirmation bias in this where you are looking at coaches to make them fit, but you can’t force this onto anyone. An awful lot of coaches will be interested, but when you get into the actual Ts and Cs, they maybe start going ‘maybe not’.”
D’Arcy then threw Joe Schmidt’s name into the ring now that the ex-Leinster and Irish boss is soon finishing up at the Wallabies coach. “Joe Schmidt would be a pretty good option if you could tempt him back. I’m a huge fan of Joe, but that could be outdated; I haven’t been in a changing room for 11 years, so it could be a romanticised idea.”
Regardless of whoever takes the job from Cullen, D’Arcy hopes it can dilute the debilitating narrative whereby if Leinster don’t win the Champions Cup, their season is a failure even if they won the URC.
“You would hope that a change in coach will release that and we have to be fair to Leinster. I’ve said this about Munster, that they needed to step out of the shadow of Anthony Foley and Paul O’Connell and Ronan O’Gara and they needed to find their own identity and they have never really managed to do that.
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“Peter O’Mahony and Conor Murray kept some sort of element of identity to it but they are struggling as a club. And you could say the same about Leinster now. We have created this mad Champions Cup shadow that we’re hurting ourselves staying attached to it.
“A few years ago, they were actively calling out the fifth star and were being very South African about it in going after it. They were overtly calling it out, saying this is our goal, this is our target… now there really has to be a disassociation from it. Looking back, we have incredible history but we don’t want to die on that shield.
“The bit that the URC hasn’t developed yet is that when Toulouse don’t win the Champions Cup or someone else French, they win the Top 14. Top 14 is arguably more sought after. You look at Northampton winning the Premiership, they looked pretty pleased. Bus tour around.
“We won the URC and it’s like, well done, forgotten about the next day. Our tournament doesn’t have the same cache yet to soften the blow.”
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