Blame players for poor start, says Leinster’s Horgan

SHANE HORGAN has absolved new coach Joe Schmidt of any blame for Leinster’s poor start to the season and has challenged the team to eradicate the errors that have undermined their Magners League campaign.

The 2009 Heineken Cup champions face an unbeaten and table-topping Munster in the Aviva Stadium on Saturday on the back of three defeats in their first four ‘domestic’ fixtures.

“It’s only the players’ responsibility at the moment,” said Horgan who has started three of the opening fixtures. “You can see it out there. We’re doing the right things in training and now it’s time to move that on and be a lot harder on ourselves. We need to be a bit more physical and not accept the mistakes we have been making because we have been making mistakes and they’ve proven costly (and) we’ve been punished for them. If you make mistakes this weekend we’ll be punished again. That’s the scenario.”