SHANE JENNINGS and Jonathan Sexton are expected to be available for Leinster’s trip to Benetton Treviso next Saturday, while Rob Kearney and Gordon D’Arcy, the last of Leinster’s Irish frontliners to return to action from pre-season, are likely to feature.

Sexton strained a quadricep in kicking practice prior to the win over Cardiff on Saturday evening, while Jennings was optimistic his tight calf would clear up by today. Jennings, captain in the absence of the injured Leo Cullen, was relieved to have recorded their first win of the season.

“Everyone says in pre-season you’re practising things and you’re trying things out, but if you lose, you lose, and that hurts,” he said.

“We’d lost the grand final here and then we’d lost two pre-season games, and then we lost to Glasgow – we were on a run of losses – so it was good to get that sorted.

“But it’s no good doing it just one week at home and then going away and not putting in a performance. We have to take the positives, like there was from Glasgow and the game against Cardiff, but we have to really concentrate on getting that win (in Treviso), because other teams are flying it at the moment.”

No doubt he had the table-topping duo of Munster and Ulster (the only unbeaten sides) in mind,

In particular Jennings cited Leinster’s ball-carrying into contact and defensive organisation.

“You saw individuals going into contact and losing the ball and maybe not controlling it and giving opportunities for turnovers, and if you give a team an opportunity and if we’re a bit tight in defence, they’re going to punish us.

“So, going into contact, we’ve to make sure that we’re better, and in defence I think we have to realise we have to look up a bit better and number off instead of looking into the ruck and focusing on the ruck. If we get our ‘spacings’ right there I think we can back ourselves in defence. They’re the two main things we have to learn from.”

Encouraged by the performances of the young bloods in Saturday’s line-up, and by the scrums (“there was a lot of hurt from last season, but it’s not just the frontrow, it’s the pack that have to take responsibility for that”,) Jennings was in no doubt a tougher scrum examination awaits in Italy.

“We know we’re going to have a huge challenge against a good Italian frontrow. Yeah, it was a positive, but it’s only one game and we have to keep doing it.”