Leo Cullen hailed the “mindset” of his Leinster players as they produced their best performance of the season in a 50-5 hammering of Connacht in Galway.
Led by a stunning 20-point haul for Joey Carbery, the defending URC champions dominated from start to finish at Dexcom Stadium as they reeled off a fourth win in a row in all competitions.
Both sides were heavily affected by Ireland call-ups this week, with Connacht down eight players and Leinster losing 17, but it was Cullen’s side who looked by far the most cohesive, even allowing for 14 changes made by the head coach from last week’s win against Munster.
“The performance is what you look at first, and I thought there was great commitment in a pretty short week,” Cullen said, after his side equalled their biggest ever win away to Connacht.
“So huge credit to everyone, the coaches were all excellent in terms of preparing the lads, because we knew there was a lot of changes coming, you get a little bit of a head start last week as well.
“I applaud the players in terms of the mindset they had all week, in terms of what they brought to the game.
“It was good prep leading into the game and it was great to see they got lots of rewards out there today as well.
“We didn’t start the game well, it was a bit tit for tat, obviously we had a lot of possession but weren’t making inroads, but we kept at it.”
Their opening try was a piece of magic, as Fintan Gunne and Scott Penny’s dummy runs were bought by the Connacht defence, allowing James Culhane and Gus McCarthy to connect for the score.
And Cullen was quick to namecheck to his forwards coach for implementing the move in training.
“It’s great, I can’t take any credit for it, that’s all I know,” Cullen added.
“Robin [McBryde], who’s sitting beside me in the box, we’ll give him the main credit for that one.
“Once we had a lead then, because of the conditions, it’s quite hard for Connacht to chase the game and I thought defensively, our guys stood up to the challenge of what is a very good attacking team; they scored 40-something points against Saracens and whatever, 40-something points against Zebre, so for them to only score five today is a great effort from Jacques, our defensive coach, and the rest of the players that are out there.”
Connacht head coach Stuart Lancaster (above) gave a brutal assessment of his side’s display.
“The first half obviously was the killer really for me,” he said.
“When you play against Leinster, and how good they are and how good they are defensively, if you fall behind, you’re forced into a game where you’re having to overplay to catch up really.
“I think our error count was so high in the first half. Leinster had the wind, and obviously the rain came in, and I just felt that we gave them too much in the first half.
“So as a consequence at half-time, you’re trying to plug the dam a bit really. Second half, we made a bad job worse, so there’s not many positives.”
Elsewhere, Cullen was asked for his thoughts on Tadhg Furlong escaping a ban, after his citing complaint was not upheld this week.
The tighthead prop had been cited for allegedly grabbing the testicles of Munster’s Gavin Coombes, during last week’s derby win at Aviva Stadium.
The fallout from the incident led to Munster issuing a statement today supporting Coombes, calling out “unhelpful commentary from people with a clear influence”.
Cullen said he considers the matter closed.
“It’s a difficult week, I think everyone needs to be respectful of that for all parties involved.
“Listen, it’s done with now, we just need to move forward.
“We’ve had a different group getting ready for a game this week and we’ve just tried to make the game the main thing and making sure it stays the main thing.
“For us, it’s moving on, we don’t have a game for a little while now but it’s closed from our point of view,” he added.