LEINSTER HEAD COACH Leo Cullen admitted his team weren’t at their best after watching the Bulls record a shock 27-26 win in their United Rugby Championship semi-final at the RDS tonight.

Having taken an early lead against the South Africans, Leinster struggled to build on their early momentum as the Bulls grew into the contest to record a famous win in Dublin and book their place in next weekend’s final, where they will play either Ulster or the Stormers.  

And Cullen said the Leinster changing room was understandably dejected as their season came to an end, this loss following the Champions Cup final defeat to La Rochelle on 28 May. 

“It is pretty sick in there, yeah,” Cullen said.

“There’s so much work that goes into getting the team to knockout games and to fall short here, particularly at home in the RDS at this time of year, is disappointing.

“We start the game okay, we get ourselves into trouble a few times with when we lose the ball in the ruck.

“That’s probably the big thing in terms of how we go about playing the game so that’s probably the biggest thing that’s sort of sticking in my mind at the moment. Because there was actually moments in the La Rochelle game as well where if you give away a turnover at the ruck, there’s a huge territory game for the opposition.

The Bulls were good and clinical when they get down our end of the field. And then we are in that mode of chasing the game, which is a little bit different to the La Rochelle game, where we lose right at the death where we are in the lead for most of the game.

“But, yeah, the Bulls, a lot of stuff that we talked about yesterday, they were very clinical when they got down our end, they came with a good plan and it is painful for our guys in there at the moment.

“As I have said previously to our young guys, it is a hard lesson you need to learn sometimes.

“The Bulls are a quality team, they came with a good plan, they were well coached and once they had a lead and played that pressure game, they didn’t have to do huge amount but they just put the squeeze on us.

“And we just weren’t really accurate enough when we were chasing the game.

We created plenty of opportunities but, you know, when you come to semi-finals against top-end teams, you need all your players sort of in an eight, nine, 10/10 in terms of how they play the game. Unfortunately for us some of us, some of us were just not 100%.”

Leinster certainly had opportunites to claw their way back into the game, but couldn’t capitalise on a healthy share of the second half territory, with the loss of two lineouts in quick succession a particularly frustrating sight for the province.

“That’s what it comes down to, it’s execution in the big moments in the big game,” Cullen added.

“Across the board, we just weren’t quite there today. We talked about the potential for that.

“The pace, complacency is probably the wrong word, but it takes a little bit of the edge off when you have a big win (last weekend) and you try to reset to go.”

It was happy return to Dublin for Bulls head coach Jake White, having seen his team lose 31-3 to Leinster on the opening weekend of the URC season.

“I’m very proud of the way we played, we learnt a lot of lessons from the first game at the Aviva. The biggest thing we learnt was that you can’t give them a head-start. Things went our way (tonight) and we got a lead.

“They beat us convincingly in the first game, there was a probably a bit of a fear factor and that drove that defensive effort. We’re in a great place, things are going nicely at the Bulls.”

White added that his team took encouragement from how La Rochelle successfully toppled Leinster in Marseille two weekends ago.

“We did study it, I’d have liked a 1,000kg pack of forwards like them, but we’ll get there.

“What gave us belief, what La Rochelle showed was once you stay in the game you can win it. I know they scored late, but I realised that once Leinster get a 10-15 point start, get a roll it’s very hard.

“You get belief from seeing them lose, if they’d won they’d probably have been harder to beat. You have to make sure you don’t give them set-piece, we didn’t kick the ball out and keep the ball in-field. Their lineout is efficient, but we got in among that too.” 

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