Focused Cheika warns of complacency danger in return leg

FIVE points, four tries scored, none conceded. What’s not to like?

Well, if your name is Michael Cheika, plenty.

Impressive as Leinster were in that mesmerising first-half, the Australian coach preferred to focus on their performance after the break, when the Scarlets threatened to undo all of the visitor’s good work.

“I don’t want to be on too much of a downer,” said Cheika, “but we didn’t get too much of a look-in in the second-half. You only have to look at the dressing room after the match. It was like we had lost. If we play like that in the first-half, we’ve got to keep going. I don’t want to go too heavy on the team, that’s the way we want to play, like we played in the first-half. It worked out in the end. It was a good first-half performance. We just want to eradicate the second-half mindset before we get to Dublin next week.”

There were a couple of other potential clouds on the horizon besides.

Brian O’Driscoll finished the game on the bench with an ice pack around his foot and a heavy limp but the backroom staff are confident the centre will be fit for next week’s return at the RDS.

The other slight worry concerns Shane Horgan, who was seen grappling with Daniel Evans during one off-the-ball incident in the second-half. But this has become a touchy subject for the rugby authorities. After all, who would have thought Shane Jennings would get 12 weeks for a similarly innocuous incident against London Irish? Hopefully, sanity will prevail and nothing more will come of it, for this was a game that should be remembered for Leinster’s sublime running rugby and for the four to-die-for tries that stemmed from that philosophy.

Not that it was all about style and beauty.

Cheika continued: “We set out from last weekend with a plan coming here to be as hard as we could. We wanted to have a fresh team to come out hard. You saw how hard they came at us, with that first kick-off they won – we knew they’d take us on from the first whistle. They wanted to get stuck into us and they did. We had to match that physicality and pace and bring a little bit extra. We were fresh and we had good concentration. In the first-half, we didn’t worry about the result, we just went through the process.”

If there is a danger facing into the return game in Dublin next week, it is that a capacity RDS crowd will flood the stadium expecting a similar tryfest. As Cheika knows, rugby rarely works like that. The Leinster coach began a week-long media campaign to warn supporters against complacency before he left Parc Y Scarlets on Saturday.

He is correct, mathematically at least, in his assertion that the Scarlets are still a player in the group and it is, after all, only just over two years since the Welsh side put 52 points on the board in a Magners League game in Dublin.

“If we go back to London Irish (in round one), we had a massive win before that game and lost. This gives us five points and that’s all it does. Next week is a new game. They’ll be going for everything next week away from home. They’ll bring a big physicality. I thought guys like Simon Easterby and David Lyons brought a big physicality to their game. They were right up for it and they will be even more up for it next week. Like we were this week, they will be next week. We need to prepare our own game so we can improve on this performance.”