Leo Cullen has warned Leinster not to look beyond Munster, even with the Champions Cup final just around the corner.
The European crown remains the grand prize on offer, even if an earlier date at the Aviva Stadium with provincial rivals Munster for a place in the URC decider is “an attractive prospect”, as Cullen put it.
The Leinster head coach was speaking at Lansdowne Road after his team’s comfortable round of 16 win over the Sharks on Saturday night.
READ MORE: Leinster 35-5 Sharks: Leo Cullen’s side sail into URC semi-finals
The Glasgow v Munster semi-final was about to kick off at the time and Cullen was asked about the threat Graham Rowntree’s side would pose if they prevailed, which they did, albeit at a potentially heavy injury cost.
The Blues have won nine of the last 10 provincial meetings, including two semi-finals in this competition, with Munster’s lone win coming in the Rainbow Cup two years ago.
“It looks like Munster have a lot of players coming back now from injuries so they will be dangerous at this stage of the season,” Cullen said.
“Munster is a team that we play a lot more with (than Glasgow) and they are in the evolution of this new team of managers finding their place and maybe after a bit of a slow start to the season.”
“Thanks to them, they went to South Africa and got two great results. One was against the Stormers, who hadn’t lost a game in, what, two years at home? And there was a lot of pressure in those games.
“Munster, because they didn’t take part last week (in the Champions League semi-finals), that’s their only focus, and that makes it very dangerous because teams can get a bit distracted if your eyes are on two different things.
“We just need to be fully focused on that task.”
Leinster could be distracted, but having lost to the Bulls at this stage of the competition last year, the odds are against the Blues having one eye on taking on La Rochelle the following week.
The Sharks’ five-try demolition again illustrated that Leinster have learned to live with the physicality of bigger sides. And Cullen is ready to continue his rotation policy this week after making nine changes to the starting lineup last Saturday.
So expect to see man of the match Caelan Doris, Hugo Keenan and Dan Sheehan come out of the side this week.
“The end of last season was like a sick feeling and when you go through this sequence of games, it’s such big games that you have to be ready to give it your all that day,” Cullen said.
“When we went into this game, we didn’t know if there would be a next week. We didn’t really spend a lot of time talking about it, we said, let’s see how we do.”
“Now that we’re over that, let’s look at the other game and see what comes out of that and see who we’re playing against, who best suits what we’re seeing in that game.
“There are players who were unfortunate enough to miss this week that we really wanted to get involved in some way at some point, so yeah, they’re just itching to get started, so hopefully those guys show up.”
“We’ll see the rest of them, but for sure there will be some changes.
“Once again, managing a group that is fighting on two fronts is very important now. The dynamic at the end of the season is really incredible. But that’s the challenge on both fronts.”
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