The tenor of the questions was as telling as their content and that contained in the answers as Leo Cullen sought to explain his side’s loss of their European title and how they would respond to it.

Without redress to faux positivity, Leinster’s head coach offered perspective in gravely addressing the concerns of those seeking reassurance that what they saw as a major setback was not a signal of the end of an era in which Irish rugby teams have gone toe-to-toe with the best in the world and repeatedly got the better of them.

Both he and his interrogators are products of an environment in which there is no overblown gratitude for isolated victories and in which meaningful success is the winning of major trophies, just as is the case for Ireland’s leading footballers, its golfers and the Dubliner who will leading England’s World Cup bid on the cricket field next month.

They are also representatives of a sporting culture which values breadth over narrowness and sees proper scrutiny applied accordingly, rather than the vast majority of commercial and media resources being channelled into a single activity.

When compared with the Scottish sporting scene the benefits of doing so are two-fold. It ensures that intelligent commentary is offered broadly, rather than what are considered lesser sports being, for the most part, abandoned to a compliant band of enthusiasts – fans with laptops and past participants - whose coverage reflects their gratitude for what access they are granted. However, the sharing of the burden of attention also dilutes the sometimes hysterical scramble for points of difference which marks the coverage of Scottish football’s over-analysed inadequacies.

Cullen was, then, duly offered a respectful hearing when committing to maintenance of Leinster’s policy of investing their resources in homegrown talent, rather than trawling the world to recruit, as Saturday’s opponents Saracens have done to great effect (and Scottish rugby less so).

“In terms of where we’re going forward, we just continue to invest in a lot of young guys,” he said.

“We’re in a different model to what they have, so we just need to get on with that and keep investing in some of the strengths we have. When you pull up today and you see the sea of support we have, every club team in the world would love to have it. So that’s a real point of difference for us and it’s something we’re very appreciative to have.”

There is, too, real understanding of how the depth of that support is directly related to the way the team remains connected to its community in this professional age.

“For us as a club, as an organisation, from the playing side of things, it’s important for us that we keep trying to display characteristics that people want to support and once we have that level of support it’s important because that allows us to try and invest and keep investing in facilities and the young guys,” said Cullen.

“That’s the model, it’s not going to change drastically, we’re not going to suddenly sign five world-class players. It doesn’t work like that.

“There’s certain market forces that make it difficult, for sure, but every team has some sort of thing that they will complain about. We don’t want to complain too much, just get on with what we’ve got and make sure we are as good as we possibly can be on any given day.”

Perhaps most educative of all, was the calm reception he received when daring to mention the ‘g’ word on being asked how Leinster can remain competitive when competing with the world XVs being assembled in England, France and, indeed, Scotland.

“We have had one or two over the years,” the 6’6”, 17 and half stone former lock said of the requirement for big men.

“We have got ourselves in this situation over the years and we played one or two French teams as well with big packs. The way we want to play is to move those guys around. We have a team that wants to play at speed. We still have some powerful ball carriers and you can see that in some of the chances we were creating to get over. You know it’s genetics really, you can really only do so much about it.”

That, of course, is mere common sense, but what can be done is to continue to make best possible use of the limited human resources available in a small country by investing in development of the talent of the many rather than the few as Irish provinces seek to build on the seven Champions Cup wins already achieved.

To that end Cullen and his ilk are about as likely to over-celebrate minor achievements as they are to deliberately misunderstand and misrepresent sensible analysis.

Irish rugby remains in good hands as it seeks to sustain its success on the European and world stage.