Gerry Thornley

A crowd desperate to see them finally get over the line.

It was very interesting hearing Shane talk about the mentality of this Leinster team and the baggage from the last five or six years.

I think particularly the baggage from a year ago against Northampton, we're going to listen to Leo Cullen's little bit of a broadside of the media afterwards, which I think was something he'd been festering for exactly a year to the day and then he finally unleashed it.

I think that there was a huge amount of scars from the Northampton semi-final defeat from a year ago.

I think it's even affected the supporter base.

And it was very interesting hearing Liam Cullen saying afterwards that, when he was speaking to a group of the Daily Journalists in the huddle afterwards, he said, he was mentioned about the failures of recent pasts, and the journalist probably wishes he'd chosen another word, but Leo jumped on it and said, it's not a failure to get to the final.

A team failure is when you don't qualify for competition.

Yet I would argue that Johnny Sexton and quite a few of the Leinster players in the last seven years who represented Leinster and made finals would argue that losing a final is a failure of a season.

And I know that that's what Shane Horgan thinks.

So I think that's, I sometimes wonder if they give themselves any credit.

They've just reached a ninth final.

That's two more than Toulouse and anybody else in the history of the competition.

So I don't think they give themselves enough credit for reaching finals, never mind getting credit from the rest of us.

Yeah, well, he kept referencing this Henry Pollock moment when I seem to remember, all right, Pollock going off his feet underneath the post, Leinster post.

And yes, it certainly could have been a Leinster penalty.

Not sure it would have been a Leinster penalty try, but... And he seemed to think that not enough of us reported about this at the time, and he could well be right.

I can't remember.

I didn't check my reports of the match.

I didn't check everybody else's reports of the match.

But in a general sense, I think for him to say, you guys love putting the boot into us...