LEINSTER WING FERGUS McFadden says the reigning Pro12 champions were lucky to come away with a losing bonus point from their opening day loss to Glasgow Warriors.
Leinster conceded three early tries and trailed 19 – 0 in the first half before mounting a late comeback that made an unlikely victory suddenly possible until Stuart Hogg’s late penalty sealed a 22 – 20 win to spare Warriors’ blushes .
“Looking back on it now we were probably lucky to come away with a point all in all,” said McFadden before heading into the squad’s video analysis session this afternoon.
“Letting the result slip away at the end was disappointing. We went over there for the win and probably didn’t deserve it, but at the same time playing badly we just let it slip away at the end.”
The old adage that you can’t win a game in the first half, but you can lose it can certainly apply to this result. Glasgow used their handling skills to good effect and owned the ball for most of the opening 40 minutes while patiently probing at a Leinster midfield that was further disrupted by the loss of Noel Reid.
The province are hopeful that the newly-capped centre’s ankle injury is not as serious as first feared when he was taken off in the first minute in Glasgow, but with scan results yet to come back, he will certainly sit out next weekend’s fixture at the RDS. On the plus side for Leinster, Devin Toner will be available to play again and the second row will add some welcome weight to the pack.
“Across the park they were getting a good bit of go-forward ball in the first half and we were chasing shadows a small bit. So 19 – 0 down, looking back on it, we’re disappointed with the loss obviously, but [it’s good to be] coming away with something rather than nothing after such a bad first half.”
“We had been prepped all week,” he added, “Matt [O’Connor] and Leo [Cullen] emphasised that Glasgow will have been licking their lips at this fixture after losing to us in the final.
“I don’t think [the intensity] was a shock, we were just falling off a lot of tackles. A few system errors and a couple of guys maybe weren’t as sharp as we would have liked physically.”
Deserved
McFadden rounds off every question by looking forward to next weekend’s clash with the Scarlets and points at the work that the squad as a collective must put in to ‘right the wrongs’ of Scotstoun.
“It hurts more when you don’t perform and lose,” says the 28-year-old,” I think Glasgow deserved to win and played a lot better [than us] and they’re a good team. But we didn’t really turn up as we would have liked. This week at home against the Scarlets we’ll be looking to change that.
“We’ve got a good bit of video to go over.”
