Not a lot for Leinster to learn as Cullen parks record win

The only blemishes on Leinster's all-time record European win over Montpellier were the injuries which forced Tadhg Furlong and Jordan Larmour off by the half-way mark.

Of the two, Furlong looks the bigger worry after departing in the seventh minute with what Leo Cullen confirmed was a calf injury which, given the tighthead's problems with his calf last year, is a mite disconcerting.

Larmour played through a dead leg for much of the first half but causes the least concern of this duo along with James Ryan, who was withdrawn from the team having been initially named as captain on Friday due to a slight hamstring strain.

“Tadhg, his calf, we’re hoping it’s not too bad,” said Cullen, while as for Ryan he added: “We just sort of managed him yesterday. Again, hopefully it’s not too bad. It doesn’t seem too bad but it’s a short turnaround and we’ll assess him a bit more early in the week.”

Leinster blast past poor Montpellier on long-awaited return

---

‘It doesn’t break us, it makes us stronger’- Connacht punched in guts by Tigers

---

AIL Round-up: Adams strikes twice as Terenure complete fine double over Cork Con

---

Asked how much he learned from his side’s 89-7 victory, Cullen admitted: “Not a huge amount, is the honest answer. We just have to park that game and move on and focus on the next challenge.

“We played Bath in our previous game so they are an opposition that is reasonably fresh in our memories. It’s a different challenge playing them at The Rec so we will see what the conditions are like. It can be quite tricky, that pitch, at this time of year so we’ll see.

“We’ll assess, recover, it’s a short turnaround so a couple of training days and make sure we’re aware of the threats coming our way. It’s very much onto the next one because you can only spend so long analysing that one there.”

The Montpellier head coach Philippe Saint-André had lamented on Friday that this was the strongest side available to him due to a widespread outbreak of Covid last week and injuries.

"First, congratulations to Leinster. We were hurt for the last two and half weeks with Covid. 18 guys in my squad had the Covid, we couldn't play last week against, Toulouse.

“Today we managed to have a team but we changed three times the team during the week. We were struggling from the first to the last minute, I coached for a long long time. I never lost by this score. There is not so much to say.

“I hope that next week I will have a lot of players back available. Today we finished with nearly all the academy backline against maybe the Irish backline. You can see there was huge difference. It was men against boys. We have nothing to say. We wanted to play, we didn’t play for the last 20 days. We had injuries, we had a red card too. We’ll come back and hope we’ll have no more Covid in the squad and train again and get back some key players.”

Nonetheless, Saint-André could scarcely conceal his anger and even embarrassment with the result.

“I’m very disappointed because I was expecting at least we show more than what we did today. I don’t want to blame anyone. First it’s my responsibility. After we come back and prepare better next week and show another face than we showed today.

What hurt the former French head coach the most was, as he simply put it, the score.

“It’s not a rugby score, it’s a basketball score. We fight last year to win the shield and win the competition. And to not show more than this is very painful after we have three or four more positive cases three days ago, a lot in the backline. Today our backline was very young with little experience but I was expecting more than we showed but Leinster were amazing.”