The 43-year-old Clare native and former Leinster Academy boss will move from Bordeaux Bègles where he is currently backs coach

Bordeaux Bègles backs coach Noel McNamara is tipped to succeed Leo Cullen as head coach when the latter steps down from Leinster at the end of the season. The appointment could be confirmed as early as this month with the agreement of both clubs. The official line from Leinster is that “the process has not been concluded”.

The 43-year-old Clare native agreed a three-year contract extension at Bordeaux earlier this year that would have kept him at the French club until the summer of 2029. McNamara is to return to a province he served with distinction as an age-grade coach, academy manager. He also took charge of the Leinster A team.

Cullen wasn’t consulted on the recruitment process to find his successor, but he would be an advocate for McNamara whom he regards highly. So too Leinster’s chief of operations Guy Easterby, who along with CEO Shane Nolan and the IRFU performance director David Humphreys sifted through the list of candidates.

The story was broken by Peter O’Reilly in the Sunday Times, who also wrote that Leinster had contacted their former outhalf and backs coach Felipe Contepomi, the current head coach of Argentina, who was unable to commit to the province ahead of the recruitment process. Contepomi confirmed that “Leinster had to make a decision earlier than I was able to make a decision myself.”

McNamara joined Bordeaux in 2023 having coached North Harbour in New Zealand and then the Sharks in Durban, where he met Bordeaux’s now head coach Yannick Bru. The former French international hooker was working as a breakdown coach with the South African club when he was approached to take over at Bordeaux.

McNamara’s time in Durban taught him to think differently about the game. He explained: “I was challenged to simplify how I thought about and presented the game, having previously believed, ‘This is the way the game should be played’. It opened my eyes a little bit that the importance is not what you do, but how and why you do it. That is something that came to the fore.”

Catching up recently at Bordeaux’s training facility, there were several things that caught the eye but one was a board which recorded the number of tries that the team scored in a season.

The season before McNamara arrived, they had scored 63 and he laid down a challenge that they would score 100. There weren’t too many takers or much optimism, but their new backs coach watched as the team crossed for 124 tries and then 152 the next year. There is another board on a wall which lists the fixtures and beneath there are boxes where try scorers write their name after every match.

McNamara has been part of the Bordeaux coaching group that masterminded successive Champions Cup triumphs, including last May’s victory over Leinster in Bilbao.

He grew up in O’Callaghan’s Mills in east Clare, where soccer was his preferred game, but he also played Gaelic football, hurling, tennis and badminton. It wasn’t until studying PE in the University of Limerick McNamara was nudged in a rugby direction while completing a final year project under the tutelage of the renowned PJ Smith.

Glenstal Abbey rang looking for a geography and PE teacher who could coach rugby. Smith recommended his protege. McNamara took over the under-14s and the following year, 2005, moved to Clongowes Wood College as a PE teacher and rugby coach. He started at under-13s, and worked his way to coaching the SCT, which he did for eight years.

He coached Ireland Schools, Leinster Under-18s and Under-19s sides, UCD in the AIL, and enjoyed an IRFU encouraged sabbatical to North Harbour (2017-2018) to coach defence before taking over as Ireland Under-20 coach. He led the team to a Grand Slam in 2019 and would have done so again the following year – they won their first three matches before the pandemic wiped out the remainder of the tournament.

In 2021 the then IRFU performance manager David Nucifora facilitated a placement with the Sharks from which he returned to run the Leinster academy before taking up Bru’s offer at Bordeaux. Former Crusaders and New Zealand coach Scott Roberston and Leinster’s current defence and senior coach Jacques Nienaber had also been linked to the vacancy.