So far so good for Cullen as rested Leinster take two against Munster

24 August 2020; Head coach Leo Cullen during Leinster Rugby squad training at UCD in Dublin. Picture: Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile

Ulster 10 Leinster 28

Two games, two wins. Thirty-eight players used, 30 of them starting either the Munster or the Ulster fixture. Dave Kearney's hamstring aside and Leinster have come through rugby's restart in fine form and with as close to a clean bill of health as possible.

Add in the sight of Dan Leavy and James Ryan taking part in the pre-match session at the Aviva on Saturday after their respective injuries and Leo Cullen can be more than satisfied with the momentum his side has regenerated after almost six months on the sidelines.

And as if that wasn't enough then there was the added bonus of sitting back on his couch yesterday to watch a Munster side that will now have a day less to turn things around for the pair's Guinness PRO14 semi-final back at Lansdowne Road this Friday.

"It was good to come through these two games because it's great the fact that we had already qualified, but were our guys going to be holding back, knowing that there's play-off games and trying to mind themselves?”

That's 21 games unbeaten now this season, 23 on the trot if you include the two league games won after losing the European Cup final to Saracens in Newcastle towards the end of last season. Even a pandemic hasn't been able to throw them off course.

Cullen was able to rest all of his favoured XV against Ulster and still purr afterwards about parts of the collective performance and the individual contributions of up-and-comers like Will Connors, Josh Murphy and Ciaran Frawley.

It was the latter's grubber kick that set the scene in motion for Ed Byrne's try in the opening minutes. Robbie Henshaw created a score by identical means against Munster which tells us that Leinster have added another string to their bow through the lockdown.

They led 16-0 here early in the second-half and closed the game out with late tries from Scott Penny and Harry Byrne, though not before Ulster had brought the gap back to six with a Rob Herring try and a John Cooney conversion.

Cooney also had a try of his own ruled out, dubiously, for offside, in between the Penny and Byrne scores. Cullen made mention of a difficult 20-minute period in that second-half when, like Munster before them, Ulster threatened to bring the game back from the dead.

That 27-25 defeat of Johann van Graan's side made for a fascinating duel between the old rivals and, while Munster lost RG Snyman and Jean Kleyn in the course of that one, the Leinster head coach learned plenty from the defeat that is sure to inform their next bout.

"Yeah definitely. There were a number of things and the biggest factor was lineout. We were a little inaccurate, which doesn't allow us to get any quality launch into the game, and some indiscipline as well which I touched on before the Ulster game.

"We gave Munster a huge amount of access into the game. It really makes life very difficult when we give away the amount of penalties that we did. So we need to learn from that and figure out what we can do better, and get a clear understanding of what the referee is looking for.”

For Ulster this was a second defeat in the space of a week but Dan McFarland cut a less irritable figure this time, his take being that performance levels had upped considerably in spite of a week's training cut short by the positive Covid-19 tests returned by eight academy players.

“Yeah, definitely. We certainly notched it up,” said the head coach. “It was much more like ourselves and in the context of losing I was very happy with that. That is a fundamental part of the game and without it you can’t do anything.

“This week we had another issue in that we couldn’t get out of our own way in terms of making errors and a couple of silly penalties. When we did get rhythm in the game, we looked pretty good. You can’t sustain pressure on a team like Leinster if you keep making mistakes like that.”

Ulster face Edinburgh in the second semi-final next weekend and patchy performances aren't McFarland's only concern. Already without the likes of Iain Henderson and Will Addison, he watched Jacob Stockdale and Jordi Murphy limp off on Saturday.

Ulster: J Stockdale; M Faddes, J Hume, S McCloskey, R Lyttle; I Madigan, J Cooney; E O’Sullivan, R Herring, T O’Toole; S Carter, Kieran Treadwell; M Rea, J Murphy, M Coetzee.

Replacements: M Moore for O'Toole, A O'Connor for Treadwell and L Ludik for Stockdale (all 56); J Andrew for Herring and N Timoney for Murphy (both 63); B Johnston for Madigan (64); D Shanahan for McCloskey (75).

Leinster: R Kearney; H Keenan, R O'Loughlin, C Frawley, C Kelleher; R Byrne, J Gibson-Park; E Byrne, S Cronin, M Bent; D Toner, R Molony; J Murphy, W Connors, M Deegan.

Replacements: J Tracy for Cronin (52); R Ruddock for Murphy (56); T Clarkson for Bent (59); M Milne for E Byrne (63); H Byrne for R Byrne (65); R Osborne for Gibson-Park and S Penny for Connors (both 72); J O'Brien for O'Loughlin (75).

Referee: G Clancy (IRFU).