Leinster left dejected but Leo Cullen believes it will get better

Disappointed not angry. Frustrated but not beaten. Leo Cullen saw it as one of the most disagreeable days he could remember with Leinster.

Captain Jamie Heaslip bit his lip and said Leinster have to be better, weren't good enough and thought there was a "weird" feel to the game, which was that Wasps were winning with the number eight feeling they never really had hold of the game.

Heaslip is not a player used to watching three tries going in against Leinster with none in reply.

Cullen saw uncharacteristic errors. Dave Kearney, after a sensational tackle minutes before on Frank Halai, who had dialled in the try line, let the ball bounce twice and slipped. Try.

Johnny Sexton kicked straight to touch from a restart and again at a penalty where he was aiming for a Leinster lineout close in. And so it went for Leinster, just off the pace, off their game across the park.

Cullen was asked if Sexton was at the same level that he was at before he left to play in Paris last season.

“Definitely. Yeah,” said the coach. “You have seen when he comes back with Ireland and the sort of performances he has put in during that time. I haven’t seen all of Racing’s games but a lot of them I have seen he has performed very well.

“He made a couple of uncharacteristic mistakes today but I would fully back Johnny to be really, really good for the rest of the season.”

‘Very inaccurate’

“It was pretty awful, we were very inaccurate,” added Cullen. “We allowed Wasps to build some easy scores with cheap penalties and then gave up a try without Wasps putting us under any pressure in our 22.

“We chased the game instead of building scores. Losing ball carriers (Ben Te’o and Seán O’Brien) didn’t help but I wouldn’t have thought of it as much of an issue as it was. It’s one of the more bizarre games I’ve seen. Wasps didn’t do a lot for their scores.”

On the emotional side and there was emotion, the players felt as though they had let themselves down and perhaps more so the fans.

In the back of their minds they know they must get a return immediately at Bath in six days’ time.

A short turn around with three players with head injuries that need assessment and others who didn’t make it on to the park because of injury make that more of a challenge.

“Pretty dejected,” said Cullen describing the mood of the changing 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 dressingroom 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 was a touch of head shaking from both Heaslip and Cullen and in the immediate minutes after the game they couldn’t precisely put their finger on what went wrong. Frustration and disappointment was evident. No solutions, not yet.

Heaslip was asked what the mood of the players was, to sum it up.

‘Pretty disappointed’

“Pretty disappointed,” he said

Anger, he was asked.

“No, disappointed,” he replied

“Mistakes happen in a game and you just got to get on with it. There’s nothing you can do about it. He (a player) goes out there and he plays hard. I’m sure everyone would view the game as what went well for them, what went wrong for them, what went well as a team, what went wrong as a team.

“We weren’t good enough to day,” he said with note of finality. “We made too many mistakes against a really good side. They punished us for it and we have to change that as a team and we’ve to do that in six days for Bath.”

But there was also more hope than hopelessness. There’s no doubting that Leinster have problems but they also know they are better than a 6-33 scoreline.

“We knew this pool would be challenging, but it just got a lot tougher,” said Cullen. “I definitely feel we can still qualify. We have lost at home in the RDS before in the first game and qualified from the pool. It’s important we stand up now and be counted as individuals, as a group, and as a team.”