Leinster gathering momentum

A COUPLE of weeks ago, Joe Schmidt talked about the process of reintegrating his massive World Cup contingent and pointed out that it had taken three games for the kinks to be ironed out when his stars returned from a late summer break the season before.

Defeats away to Benetton Treviso and Edinburgh had highlighted the teething problems inherent in such an undertaking at the time and the same issues cropped up this year despite the win against Munster and draw with Montpellier.

It was always going to take the reigning European champions that bit longer to rediscover their mojo given the fact that no team in the world had sent more representatives to the global gathering in New Zealand.