Gerry Thornley

And when you're winning a game, you can afford to play territory.

You can afford to play from the front.

You can afford to kick long and let the opposition come at you.

And I thought Bordeaux Bagley responded to being 35-7 up by just being very careful in how they played and largely kept Leinster at arm's length.

And where they're tapping penalties under the post and going for a try five or six minutes into the match, they're instead electing to take penalties at goal from 30 metres out and even 50 metres out.

And they also kicked more probably in the second half when they had that lead.

So they played from the front rugby.

It was winning rugby from a winning position.

I think that coloured the stats as well, whereas the losing team will often come back into it and have to run everything.

and go for it because they just know they need tries and they need tries even just to salvage pride as much as get back and just make the scoreboard look better.

So I think it was coloured a little bit like that.

I still think that ultimately the Nina Barr defence did fail in the semi-final last year in the sense that there wasn't

I mean, part of defending is having a better kick chase intensity and following up kicks and being prepared for what Northampton were going to do off broken play.

Everyone knew how Northampton played and it didn't look like Leinster were ideally prepped and had the requisite intensity for a semi-final.

I agree with you.

It's down to the players in some extent as well.

But I think it's also down to the management.

The team that Leo Cullen selected and the tactics and the lack of intensity from the off and what happened.

Ultimately, they conceded 39 points in the semi-final last year.

And they conceded 41 points in the final today.