Former England head coach Stuart Lancaster says making Leinster more "comfortable in chaos" is one of the key pillars behind the team's development this season in the Guinness Pro 12 and European Champions Cup.
The 47 year old, who has been making an impact as a Senior Coach at Leinster as part of head coach Leo Cullen's set up, spoke to Off The Ball seven months on from first joining the Irish province.
Leinster's style of play was one that had previously caught his eye during the peak Heineken Cup winning era, with two matches against Northampton standing out for him.
"I clipped up the second half of the European Cup final from 2011 and I showed it to the [current Leinster] players when I first came. And I said, 'that's the type of rugby we need to be playing'. That's in my mind what Leinster rugby looks like," he said.
"When I arrived, the priority for me was to get my defensive philosophy across to the team which I did in the first week or two but all the while I had in my mind I wanted to work on the attack and keep working with Girvan [Dempsey], John [Fogarty] and Leo and say, 'I think there's a lot more you can offer in attack here'. Quality attack is a lot harder to create than quality defence," said Lancaster.
"We probably spent 80% of our time on unstructured rugby training and basically I gave them a simple organisational framework to operate with, with some basic principles, and we just practiced and practiced it time and time again and the more we practiced it the more the players got comfortable with it, playing a more unpredictable type of attacking game and they became more comfortable in chaos."
He also praised the hunger of a squad featuring a host of talented young players and also added that it's "very" likely that he will stay with Leinster after settling in nicely in Dublin.
Download the brand new OffTheBall App in the Play Store & App Store right now! We've got you covered!
Subscribe to OffTheBall's YouTube channel for more videos, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for the latest sporting news and content.
