Cullen and Nienaber on the offensive, Lowe's Leinster exit

Neil Treacy· Host0:00

[rock music] Hello, and welcome along to the RT Rugby Podcast. It's semifinals week in the United Rugby Championship. Leinster, the last of the Irish provinces involved, after a big win against the Lions, set up a meeting with the Stormers on Saturday at Aviva Stadium. Munster and Connacht are out. Munster hammered 45-14 by the Bulls in Pretoria. Connacht losing 33-21 to Glasgow. Bit of a missed opportunity for Stuart Lancaster's side, but a decent season all round for them. Get your emails into us, sportpodcast@rte.ie. Share your thoughts and feelings about the rugby season. Bernard Jackman is on the couch this morning, and Johnny Holland is on the line. Gents, how are we doing today?

Bernard Jackman· Panelist0:44

Very good, thank you.

Johnny Holland· Panelist0:45

Yeah, good, thanks.

Neil Treacy· Host0:46

We'll get right into it, 'cause the, the big story of the week is coming from Leinster, and it's not necessarily Leinster's win at the weekend, which was actually a, a pretty decent blowout and just a good way of making sure there's no Champions Cup hangover. But it's a, a couple of very peculiar press conferences, press conference standoffs by Leo Cullen and Jack Nienaber in recent days. So the background, if you aren't familiar with it, on Saturday evening after their win against the Lions, Leo Cullen took exception to a question from a radio reporter. A pretty innocuous question really, about how he has dealt with the pressure of the last couple of weeks. Um, it was at the very, very end of, uh, the press conference on Saturday evening, about half past 10 on, on Saturday night, and it led to a very tense