Coach tells players get back to basics for Bath return leg

LEINSTER head coach Joe Schmidt is demanding his players get the basics spot on Saturday at the Aviva Stadium if the Heineken Cup champions are to avoid “suffocating” themselves in their rematch with Bath.

Schmidt saw his team kept try-less by Bath at the Recreation Ground in Pool 3 yesterday but still prevail for an 18-13 win that keeps them unbeaten after an opening draw in Montpellier and home win over Glasgow.

Yet the New Zealander is demanding a big improvement in standards following a game that saw a number of tries go begging and kept Bath in the game until two late Jonny Sexton penalties earned the away win.

“It’s difficult to quantify the lessons as such but certainly accuracy,” Schmidt said as the countdown to Saturday’s home return with Bath. “We want to be a lot more accurate, a lot more aware of what everyone else is doing around us to make sure that we link up and finish off opportunities that we do create. Against a quality team it’s hard to create opportunities so the last thing you want to do is butcher them like we did today. That will be our starting point.

“Our set-piece was pretty sound, our defence was sound enough apart from a couple of times I thought we got just a little bit tight and a bit slow to get our full alignment. There’s a lot of things that weren’t too far off right but the margins are so narrow in these games that if you don’t get it dead right against a good team they just don’t give you breathing space. We almost suffocated ourselves at times.”

For Schmidt’s opposite number Ian McGeechan there were similar emotions although the veteran former Lions head coach saw a big improvement from his injury-hit side after a poor run of form in the English Premiership.

“Very proud of them,” McGeechan said. “We defended tremendously well, restricted them to penalties and we’d probably both say we missed a few opportunities but I think the rugby we played in the first half was very encouraging.”

Like Schmidt, the Bath chief spoke of the “small margins, one or two errors and they got the ball into the right areas quickly and put the pressure on.

“They couldn’t score the tries so they kicked the penalties. We probably didn’t have quite that extended pressure. First half we probably had one or two good try-scroring opportunities and just needed to take those and that probably would have settled us. The fact we did in the second half with a very well executed try just showed the attitude was really positive.

“You can’t ever criticise that and the work rate when we didn’t have the ball was superb and our attacking play was very encouraging. We just need to have a bit of composure at key times but it’s a relatively new team with new combinations and that’s what you grow towards. It probably took Leinster three or four years to get to that point and you don’t get there overnight but really encouraging.”