Rory O'Connor

Maybe you could talk us through it.

Yeah, I'll read it here.

I have to applaud the players for the desire throughout the season and want to put themselves back in that situation because, listen, you guys love throwing the boot into us, don't you?

You guys love throwing the boot into us when things don't go well.

Whatever sells, because you read plenty of it.

You'd love everyone to get behind the team now when you're up against juggernauts of the game because it's not easy doing this, is it?

We're the only Irish province left in the competition, but the group will still continue to do what we do.

It's not always pretty, but we're up against some serious teams.

It's insanely hard to win this competition.

He followed up on that in the kind of Monday huddles.

It'll be a little bit more of it to come as he kind of clarified what he meant by that.

Look, I don't think the media's job is to get on board with Leinster and to kind of cheerlead them on their way through.

We did have former Leinster out half Mick Quinn put his hand up for a question in the press conference.

I think he was doing some radio co-commentary and he gave a two-minute speech about how proud he was.

He took the opportunity to make sure that he's behind Leinster and former players are backing them and how proud they were before he asked a pretty good question in the end when he got to it.

I think Leo Cullen enjoyed that, but it was...

It was a real window into how the pressure Leo Cullen's been under, how he really feels about some of the stuff that's been said about his team, the criticism they've gotten after the defeat to La Rochelle, after the defeat to Toulouse, after the defeat to Northampton last year.

And it was a sign maybe of just how much this has meant to him and how much it's been bubbling under the surface all year.

I can only imagine what this podcast would have been like had Rico and he slipped off Gail Drian and he'd managed to get in and they'd thrown away an 18-point lead in 11 minutes in the European semi-final.

But thankfully they aren't because that means we're going to Bilbao, Keane.