'It's not the way you ideally want to play every week'

AS WELCOME as these wins are, Leo Cullen doesn’t want his Leinster team to make a habit of this.

For the second week running, the Blues picked up important victories coming from behind, the first last Saturday evening in the Champions Cup at Leicester

Tigers, the second in the URC on Friday night at the Aviva Stadium against Ulster.

Looking ahead — and especially with Munster in mind next weekend — Leinster’s head coach doesn’t feel this sort of thing is sustainable.

“I suppose we’re learning to win in a slightly different way, anyway, nine points down last week, ten points down this week, which is great,” he said.

“It’s not the way you ideally want to play every week.”

The 24-20 win over Ulster, having been behind in the contest until well into the second half, tipped Leinster out of neutral at least in terms of their win record this season. Seven played, four wins, three losses.

The most damaging setback came against Munster at Croke Park in October as the Reds delivered a performance that showed they were well ahead of their rivals.

But the scales have tipped back the other way in recent weeks. There’s a lot at stake at Thomond Park in this latest meeting, but then there always is.

“There are a couple of games now we’ve got ourselves in trouble with some of our own looseness, and Munster in Croke Park is probably the one, more than anything, that’s probably one of the games where we were probably most loose with the ball,” reflected Cullen.

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“And we obviously saw the result that day against a very hungry, desperate team.

“So if we’re loose with the ball again next week against Munster, we know what’s going to happen to us because we’ve already seen it happen to us.

“It’s a great outcome from the game (against Ulster), but performance, listen, we need to get a hell of a lot better yet.

“But there are reasons for it as well. I hope you know that.

“Are they excuses? Yeah, you could call them excuses or reasons. What’s the difference between a reason and an excuse? What’s the difference?”

Cullen questioned the latest disciplinary incident involving James Ryan, who made his 100th appearance for the province on Friday night but was yellow-carded just before the hour for his attempted tackle on Ulster replacement Sam Crean at a ruck.

It was Ryan’s first game back since he was sent off for Ireland against South Africa in November.

Ultimately, Leinster were able to successfully deal with the situation thanks to the strength of their Test-quality bench, with the likes of Joe McCarthy, his brother Paddy, Tadhg Furlong and match-winner Dan Sheehan making big impacts.

“Guys are trying a little bit too hard at times, rather than just being patient,” said Cullen.

“We can wear some of these teams down, but we’re trying a little bit too hard, and then suddenly we’re getting ourselves in trouble because we’re forcing things that are not necessarily on, and then Ulster scored three tries in the first half. And that gets us into that situation where we’re 10 points down.

“I thought the bench guys did well. We had some good experience there because we know Ulster are riding high at the moment, and we knew we would need impact potentially.

“Ideally, we would be 10 points up, and we’re able to kick on with the bench, but that’s not the way it was.

“So I thought there was good composure within that. Even when James Ryan goes to the bin, I’m watching that, thinking I’m struggling to see a huge amount of illegality in that. I don’t know what you guys think.

“It’s the composure within that part when we’re down to 14 men, which was really pleasing.”

Cullen added, “So is it perfect? No. Are Ulster a good team? Yes, they are. Did they pose us problems in the first half? But a lot of it was our own doing as well.

“Can we be better at building pressure and taking some simpler options? Yes, definitely in the first half. But when it came down to it, listen, I thought we came up with the solutions as the game wore on.

“You’re not going to get away with that week on week. So we need to be better, clearly.

“There’s a little bit of everything there at the moment, but we’re still a group that are trying to come together.

“I’m sort of an optimistic person, believe it or not. I’m very realistic, though, at the same time.

“And my realistic side to me knows that we need to get a lot better. But we need to put in work as well. I don’t want us just pretending it’s going to, or think it’s going to, magically happen.

“We need to get back to work week on week. So when we turn up for work on Monday, it’s like getting excited about putting in a proper performance.”