THERE WAS A fair amount of frustration obvious in Leo Cullen, the Leinster head coach, after seeing his players troop away from Glasgow without even a losing bonus point after a game where they held the lead until the 54th minute.
“It is part of the learning for some of these younger players,” he said after Leinster’s 33-25 Guinness Pro12 defeat to Glasgow Warriors at Scotstoun Stadium yesterday.
“It is a tough experience but they will be better for it. There were a lot of really good things in the game, it was just frustrating that we did not get anything out of it.
“To come away with no points after scoring three tries in the first half is bitterly disappointing but we need to be a little bit more accurate in a couple of areas.”
The upside for Cullen was that after being forced to use a number of aspiring young players who will form the backbone of the team in the future, he will soon be able to start calling on more of the Ireland stars who are the key to the present.
“It is huge. Those guys will integrate over the next couple of weeks,” he added. “There are some selection dilemmas, which is pleasing, but for the moment, we need just to focus on getting a result against Edinburgh [on Friday night].
“We only have four points on the board and have a few things to work on with a short week before we are back in Scotland.”
The determination to take both the good and bad lessons from a game where Leinster held a 10-point lead early in the second half, only for two kamikaze moments to gift Tommy Seymour, the Glasgow wing, two of his four tries, was echoed by Luke McGrath, the captain.
“There were a lot of positives in that performance,” McGrath said. “It was just that 10-to-15 minutes in the second half where a few inaccuracies let them into the game and they pounced on them.
“We showed better width, we played a good variety of rugby. A lot of offloading was done well in the first half but that went downhill in the second and let them into the game.”