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'Time's right to move back home': O'Brien becomes a Leinster coach

(Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)

Recently retired Sean O’Brien has finally made up his mind and confirmed his next move will be joining Leinster as their new contact skills coach. It was just May 19, ahead of his final outing as a London Irish player, when the ex-Ireland and Lions back-rower suggested to RugbyPass that a definite decision on what he would do next had still to be finalised. 

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However, with Leinster unveiling the exit on Wednesday of assistant Denis Leamy to Munster, O’Brien, who was in Marseille for last weekend’s Heineken Champions Cup final as a European rugby ambassador, has now confirmed he will be returning to Dublin from London to fill the vacancy on Leo Cullen’s staff.

“There are a few things and a few bits and pieces that I need to chat through again over the next couple of weeks and kind of set it up in stone before anything is announced. I’ll look forward to doing that when the time is right,” explained O’Brien to RugbyPass two days before he hung up his boots with the May 21 defeat for London Irish at Bath. 

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I’m open to every conversation at the minute. As I said, there have been a lot of conversations and I suppose I will have to make decisions very soon on what I want to do and where I want to go and how best it suits me from a learning perspective and my development, whether it be coaching or whether it be in business. There is nothing set in stone yet but I’m definitely going to make a decision in the next week or so.”

That decision has now been taken by O’Brien and Leinster boss Cullen said: “It’s great to be able to welcome Sean back home to Leinster. On the rugby pitch, Sean at his best was virtually unplayable and he was an amazing contributor to Leinster, Ireland and the Lions. 

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“In a Leinster shirt, he played a key role in some of our greatest days on the European stage and we hope he can pass on some of his vast experience and winning mentality to our current squad. I know that Sean has always been a keen student of the game and has been heavily involved with coaching in Tullow RFC going back to his early playing days. 

“We believe he has a very bright future in coaching and it’s a win-win for both sides to have him back here. In addition to his experience, Sean has always been a brilliant presence in the Leinster changing room and I think our group will be excited and energised by having him back involved.”

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O’Brien added: “I always said that you never know what the future holds and I have taken my time to work out what is next for me. While I have loved my time with London Irish and living in London, the time is right to move back home and this is a brilliant opportunity now to get back and to get back to work with Leinster.

“I’d like to thank Leo for the opportunity and it’s an exciting one. Building on the great work of Hugh Hogan and most recently Denis Leamy, I can’t wait to get stuck in working with players that I already know but there is also some real talent coming through and to be having my first coaching opportunity back home at Leinster, is pretty special. 

“They have got a busy week ahead of them with Glasgow to come on Saturday and I’ll be a very keen supporter watching them to the end of the season.”

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J
JW 5 hours ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

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