THE REAL WINNERS

Team's consistency means more than any trophy

- GARRY DOYLE

EVER since Bilbao, when Leinster stitched a fourth star onto their shirts after wrestling Racing 92 into submission in the rain, the European Champions Cup has become rugby's longestrunning morality tale.

It is recited every spring with the same familiar cadence: Leinster brilliant, Leinster consistent, Leinster dominant... Leinster lose the final.

And yes, they have. Four finals since 2018, four defeats. Throw in the two semi-final stumbles, 2021 and 2025, and the narrative writes itself: a team of nearly-men, chokers, whatever reductive label the sport's self-appointed jurors want to pin to the docket.

Leinster don't exactly argue, either. They frame those years as failure. "We haven't won," they say, as if the other metrics - the ones any reasonable club would kill for - are merely decorative.

But is it really that simple? Because while everyone is busy sneering at the empty space where the fifth star ought to be, a few other truths tend to get lost in the noise.

Such as: Leinster have reached more finals than anyone else in the last eight seasons.

They've won more games in that stretch than anyone else. Their pool record 34 wins, two defeats - is bordering on the absurd.

When the draw throws them a reigning champion, they usually knock them over: Exeter in 2021, La Rochelle in 2024, Toulouse in 2022.

Even Leicester, Premiershipbound and snarling in 2022, were turned over with clinical ease.