Second half leaves sour taste for coach and players

SUCH ARE the standards demanded of Leinster, and, more pertinently, expected by themselves, there was a sense of disappointment emanating from the visitors’ dressing-room here in the wake of their bonus-point win.

Coach Michael Cheika expressed himself as “delighted with that first half, yeah, and the result”, before quickly adding the rider, “I don’t want to be on too much of a downer, but we didn’t get too much of a look-in in the second half. We need to go on with that. You only have to look at the dressing-room after the match, it was like we had lost.

“If we play like that in the first half, we got to keep going I think,” he continued. “I don’t want to go too heavy on the team. That’s the way we want to play, like we played in the first half. It worked out alright in the end, it was a good first-half performance, we just want to eradicate the second-half mindset before we get to Dublin next week.”

Asked in what way he felt his team had fallen off, the Leinster coach said: “We stopped running at them. You got to run at the opposition and maybe you’ll get a few breaks if you’re lucky.

“We sort of stood off a little bit, didn’t come forward in defence. We soaked it up a little bit, tried to contain, as opposed to trying to make things happen as we had done in the first half.”

Cheika accepted that perhaps the concession of a try, and the yellow card for Nathan Hines, helped concentrate Leinster minds.

“Maybe, you never know. You have to concentrate the mind when one player down. We certainly had a few kick-up- the-backsides’ warnings. We were able to get back into position and score a nice fourth try for the bonus. Just a longer period of the better stuff, that’s what we were after.”

In expressing his confidence in Shaun Berne, Cheika also made a pertinent point about his performance. “He got a chance to play with the number one backline tonight, which he hasn’t had a chance to do. He put his best foot forward in the way he managed the troops, his own kicking game, the way he used his other kickers. Kearney kicked well and Reddan came to the fore.

“And his goal-kicking was good too. It’s a good start for him. He wants to play in the team as much as anyone. The opportunity has come and he wants to put his marker down.”

Seán O’Brien echoed his coach’s sentiments. “We were disappointed the way things ended, in a way. At half-time we spoke about kicking on from there and we didn’t do that. That was concentration at the start of the second half, then a few little mistakes and they scored. It wasn’t an all-round good performance and we’re not happy.

“Every player has set standards for themselves and they want to stick to that week in and week out. Today we didn’t stick to that for the 80 minutes. That’s the disappointing thing. Obviously we’re happy we got our points and we won the game, but all round it was disappointing.”

Despite the last month constituting something of a breakthrough for him, O’Brien maintained: “I wouldn’t say I’m hitting all my standards. I’m trying to improve every week. It was a tough game out there and I’m glad to get a full 80 under my belt. I haven’t done that for three or four weeks, so that’s the main thing, getting more games and learning every time.”

Scarlets’ coach Nigel Davies took the defeat on the chin. “We were sloppy and inaccurate. We came under pressure we hadn’t experienced before in terms of a quality team like Leinster, who are used to playing at this level, and we were found wanting. It took a lot of our boys until the second half to find our feet, by which time it was all over.

“That was a quality first-half performance by them and we coughed up too many opportunities. They had a sniff at it, realised we started to panic and finished the game off in that 20 minutes.”