Leo Cullen must rally dejected Leinster players after ‘unacceptable’ performance against Wasps

All defeats hurt, some more than others.

Professional sport has diluted the connection between those who are paid to play games and the rest who pay to watch, but that bond still runs deep in rugby, and nowhere more so than in Ireland, where so many players represent their home provinces.

Sixteen of Leinster’s 23 yesterday were natives of the province and it isn’t stretching things too far to suggest that the likes of Eoin Reddan and Mike Ross would have felt no better as they left the RDS last night.

“Pretty dejected,” said Leo Cullen of the dressing room.

“The guys would feel a sense of letting people down. They take this team and the responsibility of representing this team pretty seriously and a lot of them have friends and family out there supporting them.

“So, it is a lot of dejection in the dressing room there. It is important that we dust ourselves off, as it is a short turnaround. That’s all we can focus on.

“Yeah, across the board, that level of performance is unacceptable. We need to be better than that.”

There were no excuses offered, though the disrupting influence of a World Cup in which his club provided 20 internationals was mentioned in passing.

Though an obvious factor, it is one that can be challenged.

All eight of the forwards who started yesterday spent time at the World Cup with Ireland.

In all, 14 of yesterday’s squad spent months under the one roof with Joe Schmidt’s squad, and all of the Leinster 23 have been at the club together for a considerable period of time.

All of which begs the question as to why things looked as disjointed as they did?

“There’s always a few little tweaks and it is

dealing with the different emotions going around the heads of guys who have come back from the World Cup as well,” said Cullen.

“It shouldn’t have been as disjointed as that performance and we will have a good look at how we prepared the team.”