Heaslip injury big worry for Leinster

Matt O’Connor and Neil Doak don’t look or sound alike but scribble their words down on a piece of paper and it’s well nigh impossible to make out which man’s thoughts are which.

Both have spoken at length in recent weeks about the need to play better and about how extensive injury lists have hit their squads and impinged on the quality of output from their respective sides.

A look at the PRO12 table would only add to the similarities in status with Leinster just the one point and one place ahead of their provincial rivals after Saturday. And yet this win carried with it the sense that it was bigger than the mere four points.

The biggest blot for Leinster wasn’t their stuttering first-half but the loss 28 minutes into it of Jamie a Heaslip with a shoulder injury, the extent of which will become clearer in the next few days.

Ulster at least seemed to escape without significant scares. For Leinster, there was much to recommend: the displays of Jack Conan and his youthful allies in the back row, Luke Fitzgerald’s continuing rehabilitation and the return of a general intensity and sense of momentum marked absent in Limerick a week before.

Not that Jordi Murphy is getting carried away.

“Well, just because we won doesn’t mean we’re all going to be patting ourselves on the back and be like, ‘oh, we’ll do fantastically well’, or else we’ll go over to Cardiff next week and they’ll do a job on us. If we’re delighted with ourselves now we’d have a bit of a worry.”

Leo Cullen spoke about how the next month, with its two last European pool games, could define their season. For Ulster, that isn’t the case. European progress is already beyond them.

For Doak and company it is the PRO12 play-offs or bust. “When you look at the points on the board it is going to be very tight. If we can control the opportunities we create I have no doubt we can get into the top four. We just have to try and make sure we get as many points as we can away from home.”