VICTOR COSTELLO

Beating Dragons a chance to escape Blues

STUART Lancaster admitted that the Leinster squad and coaching staff held an honest review on Monday morning, as they look to right the wrongs of the defeat to Scarlets and bounce back immediately against the Dragons tomorrow. Leinster got out of jail in their opening win over Cardiff but they came unstuck against Scarlets, who held on for what could prove to be a crucial win. Bernard Jackman will bring his Dragons side to the RDS tomorrow, and the former hooker will be mindful that his home province will be looking for a big response in front of their home supporters. Lancaster (above) conceded that Leinster must tighten up defensively as he seeks improvements from his players. “I go hard on them, because I think it’s about winning,” the senior coach said. “Having gone through the pain of losing, and not just the two semi-finals at Leinster, but being an international coach, you learn that the pain of losing is not worth it really. “Our mindset should be to go out and try and win every game. The reality is we’ve got players who are coming back from international duty, we’ve got Europe coming around the corner and trophies are won at the end of the season. “But you need to be in a position to win the trophies, so in a conference system you need to either win your conference or come second. “And what counts really is not just winning all your games, but particularly against the teams that are in your conference. So Scarlets away, if we could have won that game with them being in our conference would have been a big win. “But as it happens we didn’t so it means now that the priority goes to the next block because we’ve got Dragons at home, Edinburgh at home, who are both improved, we have Connacht away who beat us more than fair and square and then it’s Munster at home. So we’ve four games now in the lead up to Europe where we need to win.” After some harsh truths were told at the meeting earlier this week, it was back to the training pitch as Leinster looked to rectify their errors. “One of our principles defensively is not to get beaten on your inside shoulder, and as they move the ball to the edge the attacking player steps inside one of our players, who gets beaten on his inside shoulder, and then it’s inside ball and it’s stepping to the line. “So, yeah, we need to make sure that on turnover ball we stay connected but also stay square, because as soon as we started running sideways then you run onto that inside shoulder. “So that was the thing we talked about, and obviously we had practiced during the week numerous times where we’d be attacking, I’d turn the ball over, because I know that that is where Scarlets pose the difference and that’s the biggest thing they work on.”