Schmidt takes all the positives

Rugby:Leinster coach Joe Schmidt was celebrating securing a home tie in the quarter-finals of the Heineken Cup after seeing his side beat Montpellier 25-3.

Montpellier had no response to Leinster’s attacking prowess with tries from Seán O’Brien and Rob Kearney during a wind-assisted first half and a third touchdown from Cian Healy doing most of the damage.

“We have a home quarter-final is the overriding verdict,” said Schmidt when he assessed the the province’s fifth win in six Pool 3 games. “I think when you get the stronger wind, like we did today, there is some pressure to get some advantage.”

Schmidt was particularly pleased his players had got off to a good start.

“A couple of nice plays came off for us to get a couple of tries and build a 17-point lead and I thought there was really good character to defend off our line the way we did,” added Schmidt.

Leinster spent much of the second quarter defending and the way they coped also pleased Schmidt.

He said: “There was a mix of the flashy stuff and the real ‘role your sleeves up’ stuff. Those two things gave us the half-time advantage and it was fantastic to score after half-time.”

With few breaks in the Heineken Cup schedule this season, Leinster’s 24-point haul at the top of the pool was an impressive return with the sole glitch coming in the round one draw at Montpellier.

Schmidt added: “It’s a little bit hard, even more this year because there has been three months consecutive, but it’s nice to have a bit of momentum, put a few good results together even if they haven’t all been great performances.

“We just have to bide our time, watch a bit of Six Nations and hope guys come out of that fully fit.”

But one thing Leinster have this year is strength in depth and Schmidt believes the main difference between where they are this year as opposed to last season is mental toughness.

“I think mentally it was a bit easier starting off this year. The players had a sense of what they needed to do and how they wanted to play.

“Some of the younger players were used in a lot of games last year. We had a lot of confidence in them and they got confidence and experience themselves.

“We have shown during the year that we can score tries, but it was nice to show we have a fair bit of resolve as well, to be able to fight our corner and try to keep guys off our line. I thought that was a really good effort.”

For winger Isa Nacewa, keeping the French side tryless was just as satisfying as what the defending champions showed in attack.

He said: “Montpellier are a great team and it takes hard graft to get results. Maybe it (the defending in the first half) was not the winning of the game but it definitely gave the team a boost after 13 or 15 minutes to turn the ball over and go down the other end of the field and get points.

“It was good for momentum. It’s been a long 13 weeks (going through the pool games). We have tried to grow each week and I believe we have.”