Ian Madigan

Yeah, I think if you compare it to a boxing match, which there's plenty of similarities with rugby, we didn't really throw a punch for the first 50 minutes.

And when I say throw a punch, what does that mean?

Dominant tackles, line breaks, offloads, winning the aerial duels, they're all punches that set you up for success.

And

At 50 minutes or 48 minutes after they'd scored that try in the second half, the game is very much over.

They've secured the bonus point.

It was a valiant effort to fight our way back into it and arguably could have got a third try and pushed for a fourth.

Then you're looking at a try losing bonus point, potentially two losing bonus points, which, as Andy Farrell mentioned, post-game is really important in this competition.

But to come away after all that effort, empty-handed, and...

20-odd points down on points difference, that's a really poor start to the competition and it's left us an absolute mountain to climb to try and get as high up that table as possible.

I think the goal now has got to be second place and a triple crown.

Yeah, and it looked that way.

I think it was Gauthier said after the game for the first 50 minutes, they forgot that they were playing Ireland.

And I think you can kind of read into that.

They were just really enjoying it.

And large parts of that is the opportunities that Ireland were presenting them.

I think as a team, we're caught in between systems and multiple systems at that.

So if you look at the Leinster defensive system, one of their real key pillars is counter-rooking.

So by counter-rooking,

you're not necessarily going to get the same amount of turnovers as a poached threat team, a team that's just looking to target the ball on the ground.