LEINSTER SENIOR COACH Jacques Nienaber says the province are working towards achieving balance in their game.

While their Nienaber-drive defence has been excellent, some Leinster fans are concerned about their team’s attack so far this season.

Leinster are the joint-top try-scorers in the URC with 38 in nine games, while they have scored eight in their three Champions Cup matches, winning every single one of their games so far in this campaign.

However, Leinster haven’t been playing with the same attacking panache as was the case at times under former senior coach Stuart Lancaster, with the team now clearly more defence-minded.

Nienaber pointed out that opposition teams like La Rochelle, who Leinster beat narrowly last weekend, make it difficult to attack but indicated that he and his fellow coaches, including attack coach Tyler Bleyendaal, are keen to achieve better balance.

“I think we know as a team there are probably a lot of areas of our game that we want to work with, that we have to improve on and one of them is our defence,” said Nienaber yesterday ahead of this weekend’s final Champions Cup pool game against Bath.

“But I think as a team, like all teams, you want to strive to get balance within your game. And when I’m talking about balance I’m talking about between your attacking game, balance between your defensive game and balance in your kicking game.

“That almost ties the two together, you know, your transition game. So you want balance in those three departments and, obviously, nobody can play without set-piece. So set-piece for me is almost a chapter on its own. It is probably the most important part.

“The other part is where you want balance and sometimes we get the balance right and sometimes we get it wrong. I think if you look at… again, sometimes you play opposition and they give you an opportunity to attack the game.

“Sometimes you play La Rochelle in La Rochelle where they have only lost three times in Europe there, ever, so it’s going to be tough, a test match, a grind, it is going to be physical and it’s not always going to be beautiful.

Nienaber at Leinster training yesterday. Andrew Conan / INPHO Andrew Conan / INPHO / INPHO

“So sometimes you just have to go and win the game ugly sometimes. I don’t think we always get our balance right currently and it is something that we work on weekly. But, yeah, it’s balancing everything, the kicking game, it is not just defence or attack, it is the balance between all the components.”

As they look for that balance, it’s clear that Leinster’s players are loving defending under Nienaber.

His aggressive style of defence has taken some adjustment for Leinster, given that they had a more passive approach defensively under Lancaster.

Leinster’s players, who used to seem more enthused about attacking, now appear to genuinely enjoy not having the ball.

“I don’t know, to be honest,” said Nienaber when asked how he has created that mindset.

“My experience coaching against Leinster when I was at Munster and also coaching against a lot of the Leinster players when they played for Ireland. I’ve coached against them twice at international level. A lot of them were playing for Ireland and they were pretty good defensively back in the day then.

“I can’t talk about why they love it. I just know they were good at it back when I coached against them. When you analyse them and try and look for space and opportunities to get through them, they were pretty tough to get through.

“I would love to say that, listen, I’ve got them defending better, but they were always good at it. I just think I’m fortunate to work with players that are good at defending.”

When he first arrived at Leinster, Nienaber said it would take 14 games for the squad to grasp his system.

It’s something he wishes he hadn’t said because 14 months later, he’s keen to stress that there is more to come in defence from Leinster.

“I think I shouldn’t have said that! My point that I wanted to get across was ‘Listen, it’s going to take time!’

Nienaber joined Leinster last season. Laszlo Geczo / INPHO Laszlo Geczo / INPHO / INPHO

“I don’t think you can copy and paste. No, I don’t think, I know you can’t copy and paste the system and just take the Boks, ‘Bang, here we go, Leinster’. Because Leinster’s skill set, their decision-making, their physical attributes, is different than the Boks.

“Within the system, you have to find the balance of bringing the skill set of the player into your system. They must plug their skill set and their ability and their circus act, the thing that makes them special rugby players. They must find a way to plug that into the system. Because the system can’t prescribe the player what to do.

“I think we currently have certain things under the belt but we’re still adding layers to it. I’ve been six years with the Boks so the layers that were added over a six-year period are much more than where this group is currently.

“There’s a lot of things and yes, people will say the defence was good on the weekend and it was. There was a lot of grit, a lot of attitude, and there was a lot of digging deep. We had to win the game ugly in the end. Ugly in the sense defensively.

“But if we managed the last 12 minutes better, we shouldn’t have been in that position. That’s the reality. And there is a lot of things defensively that we didn’t do well. Yes, it wasn’t catastrophic but in a week, it might be catastrophic and you might concede a try and that might cost you the game.

“So I think we’re still adding layers. We’re not the finished product yet and purely just with the amount of information, we add it week after week after week.

“Obviously, the tough thing now is with players leaving for Six Nations camp, we probably won’t see them for three months. So that now stems the amount of development that you can put into them because you probably will only get them back after 11 or 12 weeks.”