LEO CULLEN WAS relieved as much as anything following Leinster’s hard-fought win over Ulster last night but the head coach insisted there was scope for vast improvement moving forward.
Leinster edged a tight, cagey affair with Sean Cronin’s try late in the first-half proving the difference after Johnny Sexton and Paddy Jackson had exchanged penalties.
It was a much improved performance from the eastern province following disappointing outings in Europe but Cullen wasn’t getting carried away now that his side are back to winning ways.
The hosts were value for their 8-3 victory but they could, and probably should, have been well out of sight having created numerous openings either side of the break.
In particular, Ben Te’o failed to keep his nerve with the line at his mercy while both Devin Toner and Tadgh Furlong crossed the whitewash but were unable to ground the ball.
And Cullen eluded to his side’s profligacy as a disappointing aspect of the evening.
“You do like to get a performance,” he said afterwards. “And I thought we did some really good things in the first-half and we started the second-half well even.
“We get over their try line and we had a couple of five metre scrums. We have to be better at capitalising in these situations we get ourselves in.
“As the game went on, we lost our way a little and we just became a little bit disjointed. Ulster defended really, really well, we have to give them credit. But from our end, we need to focus on how we can capitalise when we get in those good positions with really good opportunities.
“There were a couple of times we had a stack of numbers out on the right and didn’t capitalise and got over the try line on a few occasions but we don’t ground the ball. So that was very disappointing that we didn’t capitalise on more but there were a lot of really good efforts.”
Although they didn’t quite fire in attack, it was a solid defensive performance by Leinster as they kept Ulster at bay for much of the contest.
While Luke Fitzgerald was named man-of-the-match, flanker Josh van der Flier produced another imposing performance.
And Cullen reserved special praise for the 22-year-old in his post-match press conference.
“We talked about him before hand, how well he’s been going,” Cullen continued. “So delighted to see him play well, fully deserved his chance of starting and he’s really impressed in both defence and the pace he hits on with the ball.
“Delighted for Josh because he deserves to play well because you see how good the guy works day in, day out and it’s nice to see those guys getting a reward for the hard work they put in.”
Sexton, on the flip side, endured another frustrating evening as he continues to look a shadow of himself back in blue. The fly-half was eventually replaced in the 67th minute with Noel Reid coming on.
Reid lasted a matter of minutes though as he sustained what appeared to be a nasty ankle injury. Cullen said it was too early to deliver an exact prognosis while Sexton was withdrawn because of a knock.
“Noel did his ankle, he’s in the dressing room and he’s being assessed. It’s hard to say at this stage, hopefully it’s not too bad but we’ll see. I’m sure he’ll go down and get an x-ray and a scan. We’ll see how he is tomorrow.
“Johnny is okay, he just got a bit of a bang so took him off and Luke McGrath too.
“Nick Williams falls awkwardly on his knee and his knee folds in on the inside so he’s just a bit of a strain on his medial is what it looks like, again we’ll get him assessed so hopefully not too bad. He was up and about in the dressing room as well.
“Provincial derby so guys were going at it pretty hard at each other, defence probably came out on top for most of it.”
Leinster move up to second in the Pro12 standings but face a tough assignment away at Glasgow next Saturday. Cullen is thankful he now has an additional couple of days for his players to recover and then prepare for the trip to Scotland.
“There’s always areas for improvement but it was reasonably pleasing,” he added.
