'A good physical battle that we needed'

IT DIDN’T exactly flow like honey, and Michael Cheika was not of a mind to swing from the chandeliers about a performance that clearly frustrated him even more than a crowd that admittedly stayed with their team until the end. But it was the end game that ensured it was ultimately alright on the night.

There had been plenty of forewarnings that this might not be a routine five-point haul, not least in Leinster’s failure to obtain a bonus point at home to Castres last season. Cheika recalled that game as part of Leinster’s learning curve.

“It’s about how you keep your nerve when it isn’t going right. At half-time, when the guys came in they were down. We said, ‘This is European Cup football. Nothing’s easy. Don’t expect anything. You have to earn anything you get.’

“And it wasn’t going well for us. But we were able to stick through it. We showed good belief.

“If you turn your mind back a year, we probably played a little bit like that against Castres in Dublin and we didn’t get the bonus point.

It’s a good learning opportunity for us and a good physical battle that we needed before next weekend.”

That they should acquire the bonus point in the style they did was the most pleasing aspect of the day from Cheika’s perspective. He likes to think that Leinster have added grit to their traditional glitz in his five-year tenure – and he’s entitled to do so – but to be able to pull a rabbit out of the hat remains a trademark.

“That’s what Leinster rugby is about,” he said, sounding as much like a fan as the coach. “We believe in ourselves. Shane Horgan throws a no-look ball, and he knows O’Driscoll is going to be there. Beautiful pass from Shaun Berne. That’s how we’ve got to play. When it needed to be executed right, they – not gambled – they backed themselves to go and do it and they got it done.”

That Brive were of a mind to turn up and compete hard for 80 minutes was no more than the ex-Perpignan lock Nathan Hines expected. “In the Top 14, it’s quite physical up front, and they were always going to come here and try and throw us around a bit. So it was quite tough but I thought we dealt with it. Our set-piece was good, and our lineout was good, so we’re quite pleased with that part of the game. You always know a French team will come here and try and play up front, so no surprise at all.

“It wasn’t low, we were just a bit frustrated,” said Hines of the mood in the dressingroom at half-time.

“Things weren’t going our way. We were a bit rusty and couldn’t get any rhythm into the game. I think we picked it up in the second half, which was good. Obviously that comes with not playing for three or four weeks. It was more frustration than anything else.”

Yet Hines concurred with Cheika’s view that this struggle might be a blessing in disguise of sorts. “You can train as much as you want but it’s nothing like playing a game. We didn’t play as well as we’d have liked but we still got the result we wanted. It could be a little bit of a blessing in disguise and make us concentrate a little bit more on the way we want to play against London Irish. Otherwise things could not go the way we want them to.”

Ugo Mola, the Brive coach, smiled broadly in revealing he would be rooting for Leinster in the Pool Six Twickenham showdown, albeit out of self-interest rather than any pro-Irish feelings.

“I’m a supporter of Leinster because if an English teams win the competition, there won’t be a seventh place for a French team and we’re fighting for that. It’s important for us to look to the future.”

He could take some solace from the honesty of his team’s performance.

“We’re an international team but our spirit was good today. We didn’t have our full-strength team today but for me it’s about the squad. It’s a long season and we need a group spirit.”

“Last season, we worked very hard to qualify for this competition.

“So if today we just gave the game away, that would not be honest, to the competition or to the work we did last year. This is a big experience for a lot of our players.”