Picking holes in Leinster’s performances has become something of an activity this season. Their 29-21 win over Ulster on Friday night in the United Rugby Championship (URC) was flawed, but they got the job done.
Speaking on Monday at Leinster’s training base at UCD, assistant coach Jacques Nienaber suggested people shouldn’t get emotional about Ulster’s comeback.
In a match that appeared to be dead and buried, Leinster’s report card reads “good, but must do better”.
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Ulster trailed 29-0 after 50 minutes before three tries catapulted them into contention as they sought to avoid just their second home defeat of the season.
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Against Toulon, that kind of lapse could be fatal to Leinster’s hopes of winning a first European Champions Cup since 2018.
“I thought we maybe took our foot off their throats a bit,” said Nienaber. “So yeah, that is stuff that we will have to fix going forward. We weren’t clinical enough there, without being disrespectful to others.
“I think if you look at what happened with Glasgow – where in 10 minutes we got a card, we didn’t manage it well and they took the game away from us – the same thing could have happened [against Ulster].
“So, I think looking at the game and you look at the result, people will be fairly happy. But I think if we look at it from a realistic point of view, I think that’s the main thing. It’s not to get too carried away and emotional by a result or the score.”
Four early unanswered tries from Leinster silenced the home crowd, but as Nienaber pointed out, there were reasons for the Ulster response that can’t be ignored. Even so, the primary mission was accomplished.
The principal goal of a bonus-point win was achieved, propelling Leinster into third place in the table. It leaves them one place off the desired position of at least second place to preserve home status in the knockout phase.
“I think there’s certainly a desire from all sides at minute 55 and you should match that,” said Nienaber. “I’m not saying that we didn’t have the desire, but I think there was technical stuff that we didn’t do well.
“So, there’s a lot of technical stuff that we have to finish. I don’t want to go into too much detail about the technical side of things, but I think technically, we weren’t as clinical as we were up to when they scored their first try.”
Leinster made 12 changes for the trip to Belfast and there will be more against Benetton this weekend before returning to full frontline-player mode for the Toulon game on May 2nd.
Leinster suffered no injuries in Belfast, but number 8 Caelan Doris, prop Andrew Porter and flanker Josh van der Flier must all be assessed later this week for availability.
There was no further update on Ryan Baird, who did not train on Monday. Baird was replaced by Max Deegan after an hour in Leinster’s Champions Cup quarter-final victory against Sale following a lengthy period out prior to that with a broken leg. He has not yet been ruled out for the game against Toulon.
“Injuries, I think everyone can list a list this long in the media and say ‘listen, this is our injury list’,” said Nienaber. “We know more than any other club currently, the challenge is sometimes if you get injuries in the same position, that really tests your depth. Hence the fact that we had to go and look for somebody,” added the assistant coach of Ed Byrne’s return to the province in a loan deal from Cardiff.
“How many did we lose in one position? Four? It’s Porter, it’s Paddy [McCarthy], it’s Jack Boyle, it’s Use [Alex Usanov], who is your youngster trying to come through. Then you get Jerry [Cahir] in from a club and then you had to get another guy in. That’s challenging, but I think everybody in any club, if they go into specifics of where they are at with injuries, they will be under pressure in certain positions. You’ve got to just make it work.”
