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Heineken Cup

Schmidt bemoans inaccuracy and impatience of Leinster attack

‘You’ve got to build scores against a really good team like Exeter’, the Kiwi said after yesterday’s 9-6 win.

LEINSTER HEAD COACH Joe Schmidt was unhappy with his team’s performance during yesterday’s opening Heineken Cup fixture against the Exeter Chiefs at the RDS.

The defending European Champions squeezed out narrow 9-6 winners in the end of a tense encounter.

However, the four points were only sealed after the competition debutantes’ replacement fly-half Iganacio Mieres pushed a long-range penalty wide of the posts.

The New Zealander had issued a warning of the Chiefs threat just minutes after the win over Munster eight days ago, calling attention to their trashing of Premiership champions Harlequins. But he clearly felt his players had not fully heeded his warning as they were less than clinical in attack.

“It was no surprise to us how tough Exeter were to break down, as I’ve said all week.” Scmidt said, “They’re a formidable group, they’re greater than the sum of their parts. I think they’re well-coached, well-organised and they’re hard to break down.

“Having said that, it’s not often we get into the 22 four times in the first half and get nothing from it. That’s down to us, we have to be more accurate than that.

“We were a little bit inaccurate and you’ve got to be able to be patient enough to build scores against a really good team. You can’t just expect to force a couple of offloads or hope that somebody’s going to make a line-break and bust a tackle.

“Because that, as you saw, didn’t happen.”

Heineken Cup: Huge wins for Saracens, Harlequins and Clermont

Player Ratings: Leinster v Exeter Chiefs