Cotter concedes Leinster 'really took us to pieces'

LEINSTER v CLERMONT POST MATCH QUOTES: Gerry Thornleygets the reaction from both camps after Saturday evening's match in which, as Clermont coach Vern Cotter admitted, Leinster 'ripped apart' their French opponents

CLERMONT MUST be sick of the sight of Irish teams. Their back-to-back defeats to Leinster on these same pre-Christmas weeks arguably set them back for a couple of years, in the last four years they’ve twice in succession come off worse with Munster in the pool stages and, following last season’s 29-28 quarter-final defeat at the RDS, the French champions again come off worse with Leinster in the pool stages.

They’re not out of the Heineken Cup yet, but they’re clinging on by their fingernails and conceivably even two bonus-point wins at home to Racing Metro and away to Saracens mightn’t be enough for them. Indeed, having erred in sending out a virtual second-string team away to Racing in round two, it will be interesting to see their approach to that Racing game. That said, the same reservations were expressed about Saracens, whereupon they went to Racing and beat them on Friday night, which perhaps shows there could be a few more twists in this shark-infested Pool Two. In any event, the straight-talking Vern Cotter was not of a mind to beat about the bush. “That’s a very poor performance. I’m disappointed. To turn up here and to perform as poorly – we were dominated in every sector of the game from start to finish – there’s not a lot I can say. They really took us to pieces.”

“We had an opportunity at the start of the game to stay with them, we missed an opportunity to score which would have kept us in the game and little by little we lost our way and lost our concentration. They were a team that was far more lucid than we were and they applied a lot of pressure. Quite frankly, looking at it objectively it’s a game we probably needed and we got ripped apart. We’ll use that as a lesson and move forward.”

Lamenting the way they were physically dominated, that qualification was now “very difficult” and their inability to string two good performances together this season, Cotter said: “Our intention was to get our hands on the ball and prevent them playing the sort of game they played against us last week, but we just couldn’t. We got beaten up at ruck time, we lost most of the one-on-ones, we missed a lot of one-off tackles in the early part of the game which gave them confidence and kept them running and stepping. We couldn’t really get our defence set.

“They took us on quite close to the ruck several times, which hurt us,” he admitted. “They were all up on their feet looking for work and there was a great eagerness on their part which we didn’t have. We were much slower getting up, slower getting into position and we couldn’t go forward. We were the opposite image of them.”

The Leinster captain, Leo Cullen, was slightly aggrieved at their failure to press on for a bonus point. “Sometimes when you have three tries you almost try to go for it. It is like you don’t take care of the basics sometimes and our ball security in that period was quite poor. They brought on some pretty experienced campaigners and made a bit of a mess of the breakdown. It is a little frustrating but our destiny is still in our own hands, which is what we always wanted.

“You have to have an idea of where the other pools are at as well. We play Saracens next and we need to put in a performance. Saracens are well capable of winning anywhere and it is around the time of Brendan Venter’s last game. They will want to get a big win and we saw on Friday night that they are a dangerous team.

“If you underestimate anyone at this level you are going to come unstuck and Racing probably didn’t respect them in that first half. They left themselves with too much to do in the second half even though they would have been large favourites to win the game.”

For the two starting Irish props, Saturday was another feather in their caps, and Cullen gave some revealing insights into their progress and development thus far. “Cian (Healy) is a work in progress. He is a phenomenal talent when his head is in the game. I suppose he was pretty pissed off that he didn’t start the game last week and he probably expected to coming off the autumn internationals. Heineke (van der Meuwe) is a serious operator for us as well and he was unlucky to miss out this week. Having that competition is a motivating factor for players. Cian is far from the finished article but he has world-class ability.

“When his head is in the game he is as good as anyone out there. I believe he has the ability to become one of the best in the position in the world. It is about how far Cian wants to go with it himself. He is a younger guy. It is easier to drift but when he is clued on to the game he is a phenomenal performer.”

As for Mike Ross, Cullen said: “Mike has been around the block for a while. He didn’t get much recognition in Ireland because he went to England but he was schooled under Deano (Richards) and John Kingston for four or five years and that is paying dividends. It was a great learning ground for him and he has gone through that grind of playing 25-30 games a season. Now that has stood to him. He didn’t get many opportunities for us last year but he is the man for us this year.”