Departing Scarlets forward Tadhg Beirne has admitted Leinster marginalised him from the action during their 38-16 hammering in Dublin on Saturday.
Beirne has arguably been the player of the season for the Scarlets, but the Irishman admitted he was a peripheral figure during the one-sided European Champions semi-final where Scarlets hopes were crushed.
The second row had hoped to be part of a Scarlets unit who would boss the breakdown, but he confessed they came nowhere near as Leinster eased to a comfortable five tries to one victory at the Aviva Stadium.
“They kept the ball pretty well and they were exceptional around the ruck. They didn’t give myself, Cubby [James Davies] or John [Barclay] a sniff at the ball,” said Beirne, who leaves to join Munster this summer.
“You have to give credit when credit is due. They held onto the ball well, we didn’t.
“We talked about being clinical coming into this game and when we did have ball, we just made silly mistakes, ones we wouldn’t usually do.”
Scarlets coach Wayne Pivac had no complaints, either as his team failed in their mission to reach a first European Cup final – falling at the semi-final stage for the fourth time.
“Leinster fully deserved their win, they were the better side on the day,” said the New Zealander.
“It was a mixture of how well they played and probably how well we didn’t play; we didn’t play as well as we would have liked. With that combination, we had the result we had.
“They did very well to look after the ball in contact. They had good speed of ball, which kept us on the back foot; they just got that roll on. Once they got into the 22 they were very clinical. In a game of feet and inches they won. They put us under pressure and fully deserved to go through to the final.
“The first thing you have to do is say that Leinster played very, very well, across the board. As hard as it is to take sometimes you have to say that they were very, very good. And then when you fall behind and try and play a bit of catch-up, often that compounds things and hence the way the scoreboard was the way it was: it certainly wasn’t from a want of trying from our end.”
Pivac admitted the pressure had told and his Scarlets players had been unable to hold their skills and judgement.
“When they get in the 22 they are very hard to stop, very clinical. They looked after the ball very well and when they get a roll on like that, it is very, very hard to stop. We didn’t help ourselves. We worked hard to turn ball over in our 22 and put a little kick in behind, rather than on another day go long, downtown, and relieve pressure.
“That didn’t help. If we had gone in 17-9 down at half-time I would have been reasonably pleased; have a bit of a chat, regroup. It didn’t help with the knock-on that wasn’t awarded. We were penalised rather than getting a scrum put-in right on half-time. They scored from it. It made it difficult but didn’t affect the outcome at the end of the day.”
Pivac also conceded that Leinster had developed as a team from the side that the Scarlets beat in the Guinness Pro 14 semi-final at the RDS last season.
“We knew going into the game that they have some players there that have come in and are doing a great job for them. The coaching set-up has been together that extra bit of time, working with the players. They have a done a good job and you can see that in their performances.
“They have a deep squad and a very talented squad. Yeah they are a lot improved on last year. If things go our way and we work hard over the next few weeks, who knows we could be back at the Aviva getting a second crack at a very, very good Leinster side,” he said in reference to a potential re-match in the league playoffs in the next few weeks.
Pivac paid tribute to Leinster centre Robbie Henshaw, who hadn’t played for 10 weeks since damaging his shoulder in the Six Nations match against Italy.
“It certainly didn’t look like he’d been out for the period of time he had; I thought he played very well, very strong carrying as Ken [Owens] has mentioned. It got them a lot of go-forward [ball]. I thought he had a superb game.”