Scarlets 18 Leinster 16:LEINSTER COACH Michael Cheika offered no excuses following his side's shock defeat to the Scarlets on Saturday night.
The reigning European champions held a commanding 16-7 lead inside the opening 33 minutes only to see their advantage whittled away before Scarlets outhalf Rhys Priestland’s late penalty placed the final nail in their coffin.
Leinster’s previous competitive outing had brought the unparalleled joy of Heineken Cup success at Murrayfield in May.
But at a half-empty Parc y Scarlets, those scenes were a distant memory as Cheika pulled no punches and admitted his troops could have no complaints after starting their campaign with just a solitary losing bonus point.
Cheika said: “We know we’re still miles away from where we need to go and we won’t make excuses for the pre-season that we’ve had.
“We’ve got a good enough team to go away and fight for points in every match even without some of our players. That’s what we need to do and we won’t look for any excuses anywhere.
“Games can turn like that and it happens a lot away from home. All of a sudden the penalty count turns against you and you start giving away ground. Then the next thing you’re down men and you can’t do anything right.
“But, moreover, 65 to 70 per cent of the game we actually played pretty well in our first outing. But the other 30 per cent is when we let our guard down and gave the opposition too many opportunities to score points whether it came through the boot or the tries we conceded.”
Despite trailing to a sixth minute try from Scarlets summer signing Sean Lamont, Leinster displayed typical resilience to re-assert themselves and looked on course for maximum points after Girvan Dempsey’s first-half strike and 11 points from the immaculate boot of last season’s European hero Jonathan Sexton.
But with replacement flanker Sean O’Brien in the sin-bin, the hosts produced a late rally in the final quarter and Priestland’s 70th minute strike from close-range stole victory to add to replacement Phil John’s try.
And Cheika insists the disappointing defeat in west Wales was a missed opportunity for the Dubliners.
Cheika said: “It’s a game we should have definitely won. We got ourselves in a position to win but we didn’t take the opportunity we gave ourselves.
“We lost the game because of ill-discipline. We had a couple of opportunities to score tries but we didn’t.”
Leinster face the Dragons at the RDS on Saturday and Cheika admits he does not have an idea when the likes of Lions stars Brian O’Driscoll, Rob Kearney and Jamie Heaslip will return to action.
He said: “It’s not up to me when I get the Irish Lions back; it’s up to the Irish Rugby Union so you would have to ask them. That’s the rules and I can’t do anything about it.
“But I want the guys playing for us to be the topic because it’s not about waiting for the other guys. It’s about anyone who steps in to wear the Blue shirt.
“I thought we had really good patches for long periods of time but at times we took our foot off the pedal. It wasn’t in terms of effort but predominately in discipline with the referee and his whistle and within our set-up.
“We paid the penalty and it’s something for us we have to deal with. We’ve only got ourselves to blame for that. We could and should have won the game but that doesn’t get you competition points.”
SCARLETS:D Evans, S Lamont, R Higgitt, J Davies, M Jones (capt), R Priestland, M Roberts; I Thomas, K Owens, R Thomas, L Reed, D Day, S Easterby, D Lyons, R Pugh. Replacements: L Williams for Higgit (54 mins), D Jones for Easterby (58 mins), P John for I Thomas, D Manu for R Thomas (61 mins).
LEINSTER:G Dempsey; S Horgan, F McFadden, S Berne, I Nacewa; J Sexton, C Keane; C Healy, J Fogarty, S Wright), L Cullen (capt), M O'Kelly, K McLaughlin , S Keogh, S Jennings. Replacements: S O'Brien for McLaughlin (42 mins), S Keogh for Dempsey (70 mins), N Morris for McFadden (75 mins).
Referee:Neil Paterson (SRU) .
