Margins slim but same blue feeling for unlucky Leinster

Never again let it be said that you need the perfect performance to win a European semi-final in France.

All last week, we had Leinster players, coaches and supporters trotting out that line. The media, too. This despite the ample evidence we already had in our possession that this wasn’t a case of stretching the truth so much as one of abandoning with it altogether.

Leinster pitched up in Toulouse five years ago without Jonathan Sexton, Sean O’Brien and Luke Fitzgerald and fell just 10 points short of the continent’s aristocrats despite a performance riddled with individual mistakes.