Leinster boss Leo Cullen admitted that his dressing room was full of frustrated players despite their Champions Cup win over Clermont.
The URC league leaders have won all nine of their games this season, including back-to-back victories in Europe, but they were far from perfect in the 15-7 win over the Top14 outfit.
Garry Ringrose and Jordie Barrett scored tries in the opening half, while out-half Sam Prendergast, named man of the match, kicked five points as they backed up last weekend’s win at Bristol.
Cullen told RTÉ Sport: “A win, isn’t it? When you see these two fixtures at the start, and where they’re positioned, after the four Test matches, if someone said you were going to get nine points from the two games, you’d probably be quite happy.
“But when you score two tries in the first half of the second game having got five points last week, it sort of feels like there are things there that we can be better at.
“The dressing room is frustrated at how we performed today because we want to put on a better show in front of our home fans but at the same time, you’ve got to win against a team that is used to these sort of arm wrestles in the Top 14, where they’re currently sitting third.
“They’ve ton of experience. It’s good to get a win.
“The conditions deteriorated in the second half and it became quite difficult to play but at the same time, there’s lots of things that we can be better at, so it’s pretty mixed, I’d have to say.”
Leinster lost 40% of their lineouts, an issue that mirrored some of Ireland’s problems over the November window.
“Listen, it hasn’t been a major issue for us,” added Cullen.
“But yeah, it was poor today. You have a bad day, we’ll go back, work hard next week and whether you win or lose, you go through the process again and there’s plenty of good experience in there so they will figure it out, I’m sure.
“Because of the way they are coached, you go through the history of Christophe Urios teams, they will kick the ball off and pressurise lineout, which was what we expected.
“We didn’t see some of the pictures and then we got rattled, couple of throws go awry and combination of lots of different things and then suddenly you are losing seven lineouts or whatever it was.
“That sort of creeps into the rest of our game.”
While Prendergast, who made his international debut last month, cut a frustrated figure as he made his way off following three errors, Cullen was impressed with the 21-year-old’s outing on his 22nd Leinster appearance.
“I thought there were some really good touches, particularly in the first half, a lovely bit of play for Garry’s first try as an example,” said the head coach, whose side face Connacht next weekend in the URC.
“And again, you have a young 21-year-old 10 so he’s picking up experience there all the time. It’s fantastic.
“Sam is making great progress. Think to where he was this time last year, so many facets of his game that have kicked on to another level, and hopefully we’ll continue to see that progress now.”
