Kearney: Improvement needed for Wasps test

Dave Kearney says Leinster must learn from the mistakes made in their defeat to Ulster if they are to get a result against London Wasps on Friday (8pm).

Joe Schmidt’s team suffered their first home RaboDirect PRO 12 defeat of the season on Saturday at the hands of Ulster, a result which saw them drop to third in the table.

With just a six day turnaround before their Amlin Challenge Cup quarter-final in Adams Park, Kearney insists the province must address what went wrong against Ulster to prepare themselves for Wasps.

“It was really disappointing to get the first home loss in the Rabo this season in the RDS, which is usually such a good place for us to play,” he told LTV.

“There are a couple of things we just need to tweak in our game. It’s hard to score tries and points when we don’t have possession.

“I think we spent a lot of last weekend and the weekend before defending too much, and just a couple of unforced errors and simple things that we need to work on, and if we get that right we can click then.

“We need to be hard on ourselves, and look at the video from last week, and look at what we can improve on, and take that into next week.”

Like Leinster, Wasps struggled to gain momentum ahead of Friday’s showdown as they fell to their fourth consecutive league defeat against Saracens on Saturday.

That result has left them in seventh place in the Premiership table but Kearney knows they have been impressive at home all season and is particularly wary of the threat they pose out wide.

“They’ve got a really good home record at Adams Park, I think Sarries and Harlequins were their only downfalls this season.

“In the backs they’ve got a lot of talent. Joe Simpson at nine is a young guy, 24, he’s got nearly one hundred caps for his club.

“Especially in the back three for me, they’ve got Wade and Varndell out wide, I think they’ve scored nearly 55% of Wasps tries this season, if they’re given space they’re pretty hard to stop.”