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27th April 2023
04:06pm BST
"I don't know what the arrangement is or if they want to keep the blueprint that Lancaster had, with regards to how they're trained or what the mindset is... I don't know if he will be allowed do whatever he wants and put his own stamp on things. I presume a part of his negotiations may have been that he'll do it his way but he'll have to play within that Leinster ethos." "That was always the thing that Stuart had with us - that you train like dogs," O'Brien added. "That training was almost harder than matches. That's the way it always was and that's the way, I imagine, it will stay, even after he leaves. You're fairly humble every Tuesday morning when you come to train."Greg O'Shea will be following the Jacques Nienaber arrival closely and monitoring what changes the South African brings to the four-time European champions. O'Shea recalled a pre-season training drill [LISTEN from 38:20 below] that sums up the Nienaber coaching mentality, and how it fired up the Munster players beyond belief.
"Jacques was a strength and conditioning coach, then he qualified as a physio and then started learning the ropes with Rassie. Every team Rassie was involved, he's brought Jacques with him. Still, Jacques went and became a fully qualified physio, so he was able to be along the side of the pitch for the games, running on with water and treating players but he's a coach, too."O'Shea feels that Leinster tempting a coach of Nienaber's stature away from his native South Africa demonstrates the sway, and stature, of the province. The 50-year-old was first with Cheetahs before moving on to Western Province and, by extension, the Stormers. He was also involved with the Springboks but arrived over at Munster as assistant coach in 2016.
"I remember that first week at Munster, after he first came over," said O'Shea. He brought everyone for a rucking session and brought everyone in a huddle before the first drill." O'Shea recalls that Nienaber asked the players to visualise their nearest and dearest in harms way, over the far side of the ruck. He asked what each player would do to get past the breakdown defences and over to the other side of the ruck. "That's the mind-set you have to have," Nienaber told the Munster players. "You have to do everything you can to get to the other side of that ruck."Conor O'Brien playfully asked if Munster went out, in their first pre-season outing under Nienaber, and got 14 red cards. "It's that controlled aggression is always the issue for many South African teams," O'Shea observed. "They always go out with this hate for the other team."
"Everyone started fighting in training, the first couple of weeks," said O'Shea. "They had to just calm it down." "Do you know who took to it like a duck to water?" he added. "James Cronin. The first session, he went at Dave Kilcoyne, and hurt him."It will be interesting to see if Jacques Nienaber brings out that rucking speech when he arrives at Leinster, after the World Cup.
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