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10th June 2025
10:54am BST
Leinster looked back to somewhere near their best in Saturday's URC semi-final win over Glasgow.
It was a performance that was tinged with anger and frustration at their failure in this year's Champions Cup, and indeed in Europe and the league over the past four seasons, where they have failed to win any silverware.
This attitude was reflected after the game by lock Joe McCarthy, who strayed from the normally heavily media-trained and robotic interview answers.
He said: "We know everyone loves to hate Leinster so that definitely drives us on.
"We have a great fan base so we don't really care about the outside noise, what you guys [on the TV panel] say or the fans or other people say."
It is true that fans from all over Europe take great pleasure in seeing a team with such great financial and logistical resources constantly fail.
Their Champions Cup disappointment this year was particularly heinous given the presence of RG Snyman, Jordie Barrett, and Rabah Slimani.
They have also picked up a reputation as flat-track bullies, after the drubbings of Harlequins and Glasgow in Europe.
However, speaking on RTÉ, former Ireland captain Munster man Donal Lenihan said that this perceived attitude towards Leinster has largely been of their own doing.
He explained: "Well, I think saying everybody hates Leinster is a little bit over the top.
"I think this boils down to the quality of the Leinster squad and what they've achieved over the past 4 years.
"Remember Danny Care, the former England scrum-half, Harlequins, 38 years of age, he's been around forever.
"He was in that 62-0 demolition in the round of 16 in Europe, and he just kind of laughed when he was interviewed afterwards when he spoke about the quality that Leinster had, bringing on people like Snyman, Jordie Barrett.
"And you look at the Leinster squad, they've 12 on the Lions tour, it would have been 13 for certain if Caelan Doris hadn't got injured.
"They've another 12 who are going on the Irish tour to Georgia and Portugal. So that's 25.
"You add in Slimani, Snyman, and Jordie Barrett. That's 28.
"Then you look at the match-day squad on Saturday, it had Ross Byrne and Luke McGrath, who are two seasoned Ireland internationals.
"When you have that quality and depth in your squad, people are entitled to think that you should be winning trophies.
"And unfortunately, for whatever reason, that hasn't happened for the last 4 years."
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