It's a massive few weeks for Leinster, with the prospect of a first ever Champions Cup final appearance on home soil beckoning on the horizon.
With this year's final taking place in Dublin's Aviva Stadium, there is added weight behind Leinster's semi-final this Saturday against Toulouse. Despite appearing in the final six times, they have never played a showpiece on home soil, so there will be an added drive behind Leo Cullen's team this weekend.
Thanks to their stellar performance in the pool stages this year, Leinster have also played all of their knockout games thus far in the Aviva Stadium, and will repeat the trick on Saturday against Toulouse.
Naturally, there are some who begrudge the home advantage Leinster have enjoyed this season, and yet another pieced published in the British press has called the situation "unfair" both on Leinster's opponents and on the team themselves.
Champions Cup: Another British columnist questions Leinster home advantage
Earlier in April, England legend Brian Moore said he would like to see the Champions Cup final moved from the Aviva Stadium, should Leinster qualify.
The reasoning behind Moore's suggestion was that "no club" should be granted home advantage for a game such as a Champions Cup final, and he proposed selecting the final venue after the quarter-finals have been set, so as to avoid any team being granted such an advantage.
7 April 2023; Leinster mascot Leo the Lion during the Heineken Champions Cup quarter-final match between Leinster and Leicester Tigers at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin. Photo by Harry Murphy/Sportsfile
Now, another British rugby columnist has questioned the 'injustice' of Leinster's home advantage throughout the knockout stages, and the potential for them to play a "home" final.
Martin Samuel of The Times said that having Leinster play all of their knockout games was "unfair" - not only to the team's opponents, but to Leinster themselves. Samuel suggested that any prospective success for Leinster would be seen as aided by their home advantage:
Leinster are favourites to become champions of Europe for a fifth time next month, powered by a very fine team and a completely avoidable competitive advantage. If Leinster reach the final on May 20, they will have played eight games, and all but two will have been at home. January 14 at Gloucester will be the last time Leinster played outside the Aviva Stadium, Dublin, in their European run, having previously visited Le Havre to face Racing 92. The rest will be home encounters.
The Heineken Champions Cup plays its knockout rounds over a single leg and home advantage is bestowed on the higher-ranked team. Leinster dominated pool A, so got their rewards. Yet the semi-finals and final are played at neutral venues. It just so happens that European Rugby decided Dublin in 2023 would be neutral.
So Leinster play Toulouse at home this weekend, and then the winners of La Rochelle and Exeter Chiefs there in May. It’s wrong. There has to be a way to organise a competition from a year out so that the deciding venues are guaranteed neutral. Next year, Tottenham Hotspur’s stadium has been chosen for the final. That’s sensible, but this was always likely to bestow an unfair advantage. Leinster were last season’s finalists and their team is the core of Ireland, ranked first in the world.
And, yes, Bayern Munich got to play football’s 2012 Champions League final at home and didn’t win. Yet if Leinster do, it will always be thought they were given a leg-up. It’s not fair on them; but it’s certainly not fair on the others, either.
It's a point that we're likely to see raised plenty more times between now and May 20, should Leinster get past Toulouse this week.
One must note, however, that in recent years Leinster have played a Champions Cup final against La Rochelle on French turf in 2022, and one against Saracens in England in 2019. An event as big as a European final requires a huge logistical undertaking, and it is no surprise that venues are decided far in advance of the big day.
It is also ten years since the Champions Cup final was played in Dublin, with another ten year gap back to the previous final in Ireland in 2003.
Others, such as Ulster coach Dan McFarland and Leicester coach Richard Wigglesworth, have suggested that Leinster enjoy unfair advantages in other areas such as funding, and Leinster coach Leo Cullen addressed those murmurs during his press conference on Monday:
Not long ago we were having a conversation about the gulf between us and other teams, the French teams in particular. Obviously English rugby is going through a tricky patch at the moment so they've had to shrink their budgets off the back of what's going on in the game - clubs going out of business. That's called sensible business, isn't it?
We're just focused on trying to do what we can. I'm not really focused on what other teams are doing and what other teams are saying.
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