Former Ireland and Leinster out-half Ian Madigan cannot see Ronan O'Gara taking over from Leo Cullen at Leinster.

Cullen will depart from Leinster at the end of the 2027 season, having been appointed as head coach in 2015.

Several names have been linked with the role, including O'Gara, currently managing French side La Rochelle.

The former Munster and Ireland player has won two Champions Cups with La Rochelle, with both finals against Leinster in 2022 and 2023.

While many fans would be happy to see O'Gara back in Ireland, Madigan is not confident of him making the switch.

“I personally don’t see that happening,” Madigan said.

“I think he’s a fantastic coach, but I just think from knowing ROG and how much he loves that rivalry and competitiveness, I’m not too sure if he’d come back and be wearing the blue of Leinster.

“It’s hard to start listing off names because you’re always going to leave someone out, but the interesting ones are a possibility, but it’s difficult to call a year out.

Madigan believes Leinster may look closer to home at coaches already in Irish rugby for the role.

“Scott Robertson, it’s hard to know how much coaching he would do if he came in. Would he come in as the director of rugby and have the coaches reporting up to him? With the likes of Jacques (Nienaber), could he step up into that director of rugby role, or, from his standpoint, would he rather continue coaching, or would he be more of a coach that heads up the team?

“It’s hard to see what Leinster will do from that kind of organisational standpoint.

“Could one of the coaches involved with the Irish set-up look at the Leinster job and see it as an opportunity? Obviously the likes of Easterby have headed up teams, and Johnny Sexton is in there now.

"I think Paul O’Connell has already ruled himself out but would certainly have head coaching capabilities.”

It was another season where Leinster suffered defeat in a Champions Cup final, a heavy loss to Bordeaux this time around.

A fifth final defeat since their last European victory in 2018 could not have been easy for Cullen, who has spent nearly all his adult life with Leinster as a player and coach.

A former teammate of Cullen, Madigan, says a new voice may benefit Leinster.

"When he took the job, I think it's important to note that he felt he was the best person for the job at the time, and I think he's believed that every step of the way. For him to make his decision, that's for him to verbalise, but maybe Leo's come to the realisation that a fresh voice or a fresh pair of eyes is going to be the best thing for this team to move them forward.

"It is interesting that he is doing this season as well, and he certainly has unfinished business with this team. Can they do the treble in the URC and can they get that elusive fifth star in the Champions Cup?

"I hope that that's going to really galvanise both the coaching team and the playing team so that they can get over the line and give Leo the send-off that he deserves because he's largely given his adult livelihood to the club."

Ireland has also come off the Nations League campaign in July, which had plenty of talking points.

After coming from behind to defeat Australia, an unconvincing win over Japan was followed by a heavy defeat to New Zealand.

With just over a year to the World Cup, Madigan is not pressing the panic button just yet but has identified some areas Ireland needs to work on.

"I suppose the crescendo of the Nation Series (v New Zealand) was this Irish team after a really long season post the Lions, a full November Series, Six Nations, URC and Champions Cup campaign. Were they going to be able to dig deep one more time?

“I certainly hoped they could, but in hindsight, it was a game too far for the group, and I thought on the day our accuracy in attack wasn’t where it needed to be, and that’s certainly a big area of growth for this team as we head into the Nations Series in November and onto the Six Nations.

“We need to either go all-in on being a team that has a rush defence or make it clear to both the players and supporters what the identity is and what the way that this Irish team defends?

“And maybe we’re just really hard to break down, but not necessarily getting high off the line. But I thought in that New Zealand game in particular, we got caught between two stools and got caught in between those two systems.”

There are fewer than 10 Ireland games to make an impression on Andy Farrell between now and the World Cup, as Madigan explained how to make the most of the limited time.

"There’s plenty of time for players to go away, and look, there is a closed skill element of pass accuracy and lines of running that you can work on and see significant improvement in over a relatively short space of time.

“Like, if you were to do an extra 15-20 minutes of passing at the end of every session, that’s north of an hour a week, four hours a month, 12-16 hours over three months. That is significant.

“If you did that for three months, the ball’s going to feel a lot better in your hands come the start of month four, and that would be the point where this team are going to be heading into the November Series, and suddenly Andy Farrell’s looking at players going, ‘Well, he’s been working on his passing over the last three months'."