Cheika breathes a sigh of relief

RELIEF ABOUNDED more than joy. Leinster know that for all their undoubted efforts, they are neither flowing nor firing. Yet, having sampled the empty feeling that goes with ceasing all interest in Europe from the third week in January last season, they were grateful at least not to have joined the likes of Stade Francais, Clermont, Wasps and others who didn’t make it. Roll on the drier tracks of April.

You sensed Michael Cheika was disguising his inner angst after what must have been an especially tortuous 80 minutes for the Leinster coaches. “It was a little frustrating, but that’s the nature of the game. We were in their territory for so long and couldn’t manage to get over. I’d be lying if I said I had an answer. Maybe we were too anxious in trying to get over instead of organising to adhere to our planning. Maybe we could have held our nerve and stuck to our striking pattern.”

Inevitably, though, Cheika was obliged to address the reasons why a team featuring so many gamebreaking backs had failed to score a try for three games running. “I think teams go through those cycles. It doesn’t mean we can’t score tries. We still would have finished in the top five of try-scorers in the pool games. We have them in us. We’re just going through a phase; maybe trying too hard.

“We did hit the ball with a bit more pace I think. We missed the odd set-piece, and they were trying to get in at us on the ground. They gave away 10 penalties in the first half alone. I’ve mentioned before teams are prepared to foul. It’s just a factor not a big excuse. We’re confident if we can get through our games in the last four or five weeks without that, we’ll be hard to handle.”

There’ll be a residual feeling of having forfeited a chance of a home quarter-final by dint of their defeat away to Castres in their fourth match, but for which they might be looking forward to a visit from Bath to the RDS in the quarter-finals. Cheika maintained Leinster could draw “confidence” from previous quarter-finals on the road. “We’ve had one quarter-final win and loss away,” he observed, in reference to the win at Toulouse three seasons ago and the loss to Wasps two years ago.

“It’s about preparing for whatever team we meet. All of those teams have good form on the board in those pools, they’re all tough pools. So much can happen between now and then. The Six Nations, we’ve four Magners League matches. When we know our opponents we’ll set up our strategy for how we want to play.

“We do need to improve, there’s no doubt about that,” Cheika added without prompting. “If we want to step up our challenge, and we do want to challenge, we do need to improve our game. That goes without saying and I’m confident we can do that because we were playing good footie before, scoring tries. We’ve gone off the boil but we’ve still battled away and are sneaking bonus points. Maybe the passes weren’t accurate but we did come on to the boil. They’re little things we’re working on.”

Reflecting on the conditions, Bernard Jackman conceded that the forwards were possibly guilty of taking too much out of the ball and confirmed: “Rocky (Elsom) gave out to us a little time. Perhaps that’s the pressure of the situation, we kept the ball and we had a few overlaps. Maybe we don’t trust the pass. When the rain came, it was always difficult to score four tries. We wanted to get two scores ahead of them and then score tries. In fairness, their defence was very good, they made their first-up tackles and they frustrated us.”

Rob Kearney confirmed the mood in the dressingroom was a mixture of relief and happiness. “There’s disappointment again that we haven’t played to our potential once more. At the same time we’ve qualified.”

Of the three-game tryless run, the fullback admitted: “It’s hugely frustrating, no more so than for the backline. Encouragingly, we’re creating opportunities, line-breaks and just lacking the clinical component. If we can get the final pass, we’ll see the tries coming. It’s hard to put a finger on it. We can improve our depth a little more, by half a metre. Small things make a huge difference. Not a mental thing. Hopefully it will improve with more games.”