WE DIDN’T TAKE OUR EYE OFF THE BALL, SAYS CRONIN
LEINSTER hooker Sean Cronin said that complacency did not cost them their record winning run in the Champions Cup and that they knew they would need a huge performance coming to Toulouse last Sunday. The 32-year-old, playing at Stade Ernest Wallon for the first time in his career, said they were composed in their approach to the game and didn’t get carried away after their 52-3 victory over Wasps the previous week that took their winning run into double figures. ‘No, we were pretty levelheaded. The coaches pointed out a few areas where we weren’t that good against Wasps and that we wanted to work on. There was no complacency there. ‘I think we just tried to overplay at times and probably lost out on aspects of the pressure rugby. They kept the pressure on us better in the second half. We had moved on from Wasps.’ He said the key now was to bounce back when the competition resumes with back-to-back matches against Bath in December and to use the Toulouse defeat as a driving force. ‘That’s what I was thinking inside. Seanie [O’Brien] was talking after the game and saying that we need to move on and build on this. ‘I was thinking in my head that it wasn’t necessarily a kick up the backside but it is early days yet. We have two huge games against Bath and, looking back on this, there are a lot of things that we can look to do better the next day that will definitely help us.’ Toulouse’s victory at a rocking Stade Ernest Wallon in front of a near capacity crowd of 17,892 has thrown the pool wide open and Cronin acknowledged that the only other four-time winners, apart from themselves, were clearly armed for battle. ‘You can see that they really buy into it. They’ve got the four stars on the chest. They’re a big club and they really buy into the European competition. We knew that coming down here. Guys had played here before — I hadn’t — and we knew about the atmosphere. ‘I think John Fogarty said it was an attack on the senses. I don’t think that disrupted us too much. It was just trying to push the play too much in the first 25 minutes and leaving them back into the game.’